Gotham's Saviors
by The Clown King Of Chaos
Summary: Batman meets Alex Mercer who is seeking to redeem himself for his past by ridding Gotham of its crime, but with extremely lethal methods. Now The Caped Crusader must find a way to contain Mercer before the Living Disease murders all but one of the super-villains in Gotham after the city is once again cut off from the world... with all of them trapped in it.
1. Arc One: Redemption

Alex Mercer looked out at the coastline city known as Gotham with all its almost blinding lights, skyscrapers, and decadence. In the distance he heard the wailing of police sirens, shouting, crying, and even a small fit of maniacal laughter. All the things he had heard and seen were true; the city was a cesspool of crime, debauchery, and chaos.

"I'll show them," Alex promised himself. "I'll show all of them that I'm not just a murderous walking disease." He jumped off his vantage point to the ground and slowly began walking toward the city that he would save from destruction. He would show the whole world that Alexander J. Mercer would be something that didn't fill the hearts of whoever saw with fear and despair, but hope and a sense of freedom and safety. He had heard rumors and tales of the one they called the Batman. Alex respected the borderline vigilante, but he saw him as weak. Batman didn't kill, and that meant his enemies could return and murder even more innocent people. Mercer didn't take prisoners and rarely showed mercy. He wouldn't allow the villains that desecrated this town to harm it any further once he got his hands, or more likely his Claws, on them. But unlike last time, unlike Manhattan, he would try to refrain from Consuming as many civilians as possible. He didn't want that much innocent blood on his hands again.

As he walked through the somewhat empty streets, he paid no mind to people looking at him, unlike he did in New York. Back there, he was so paranoid that someone would recognize him that he panicked and killed anyone who looked at him for more than five seconds. But here, they wouldn't see a bioterrorist or murderous berserker; they would see a simple man dressed in common shoes, jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a brown hoodie with the hood never leaving his head all topped off with a leather jacket.

As he walked past a random alley, he stopped after hearing a cry of fear. He stepped back slightly and pressed his back against the edge of the wall. He looked back to see a woman in her twenties being held at gunpoint by a man in his mid-thirties. The woman had on a fur coat over a dress, and the man had on nothing but ragged clothing.

"Gimme yer cash, and I'll help myself to tha' necklace too," he said in a hoarse voice as he cocked back the hammer of his revolver.

Alex sighed to himself, but then made his arms transform into his Claws. And just to be safe, he made a black banadana cover his face from on top of his nose down. "Gotta start somewhere, even if it's the bottom," he said to himself. He ran up to right behind the mugger and grabbed him on the shoulders and spun him around. The guy was surprised by what he saw, and even more shocked when the man who had spun him on his heels grabbed him by the neck, and lifted him up onto the air as if he weighed no more than a feather. Alex could see fear in the crook's eyes, but not just the fear of him. The mugger was scared of the entire situation even before Mercer had made his entrance. He was afraid to do this, to try and rob the woman. Alex didn't know if he was homeless or desperate or what. He considered Consuming him for a moment, but forced the thought out of his mind. This man was just an average guy who needed money for a reason only he knew. He wasn't a super-villain who would put the lives of thousands at risk.

Mercer let out another sigh, and dropped the man. "If I see you again, I really will hurt you," he said in an indifferent voice.

The mugger took one quick look at Alex's Claws, and ran off for dear life. Alex watched him sprint out of the alley, and turned back to see the woman standing like a statue, staring at him. Feeling rather awkward, Alex allowed his arms to return to normal, and began to walk off. But then the woman called out to him.

"Thank you!"

That stopped Alex dead in his tracks. No one had EVER said that to him. He turned around and saw that she was smiling at him with appreciation. "Uuummm... you're welcome?"

"I am so grateful for your being here. Another hero in Gotham. I do love Batman, but I admit that he cannot handle all this on his own."

"That's partially why I am here."

"Well it's so comforting to know that you decide to use your gift to help rather than torment." Mercer pondered on that. He had never thought of his powers as a gift. "So what are you called?" the woman asked with curiosity.

Alex at first thought about saying 'Mercer' but he stopped and remembered the codename Blackwatch had given him. He then decided to go by that name here. No longer would people cower in fear and run for their lives away from...

"Zeus," Alex said. He turned around and leapt off into the dark evening.

XXXXXX

The next morning, Bruce Wayne was sitting at home watching the news. For once it wasn't about Batman. The text at the bottom of the screen read 'New Hero In Town?' and a young woman was almost prattling on about a man who made his arms into spiked black and red gauntlets and grew small swords for fingers.

"What's up?" Damian Wayne asked as he strolled into the room and dropped himself into the couch next to his biological father. He also read the words at the bottom of the screen. "Let me guess. We're going to go and find out as much as we can about this..." He stopped to listen to the woman being interviewed to say her savior's name once more. "Zeus guy right?"

Even though Damian was his son, Brice was still surprised at how much they thought alike.

XXXXXX

Late the next night, Mercer was calmly walking down the street looking at the tall buildings and bright lights. It was all so similar to what Manhattan had been before he had come along.

"If I didn't know for a fact that this place is a cesspool, I'd say it was almost normal." He strolled along with no place to go nor any destination in mind. But that didn't bother him much; from what he had heard, he simply needed to wait about an hour before someone set off a bomb or took the city hostage or some other insane scheme. As he passed an electronics store with several televisions in the window, he heard something on them that caught his ears. He stopped in front of the store to see what was so horrid.

"We have just received word that three of Gotham's most dangerous outlaws have escaped from Arkham Asylum. Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, the Joker, and Victor Zsasz are now lose in the city. People are all advised to stay indoors at night, and to never be alone."

"You should heed that advice, little piggy," a creepy and empty voice said right behind Mercer. The next thing Alex knew, a hand was over his mouth and a knife was at his neck.

Zsasz felt amazing as he tore his carving knife across the hooded zombie's neck, freeing him from his pointless, redundant existence. He took his hand away from his victim's mouth, and prepared to carve a tally mark on his stomach, but he stopped when he noticed something very wrong. The zombie was not falling down. Suddenly his victim flexed his shoulders and elbows backwards towards him, and sent him flying across the street and into the wall. As Zsasz picked himself up while groaning in pain and confusion, he looked over and saw his latest victim alive and well and walking towards him. Two things were different about him: his neck looked like Zsasz had never touched it, and his arms looked like they were coated with a black spiked armor that made his fingers look like long narrow daggers.

"You're... you're..." Zsasz struggled to form words. He then remembered that small bit of news he had watched before he escaped. "You're that freak the girly pig was talking about."

"Zeus." Mercer grabbed Zsasz by the neck and lifted him into the air. He had deduced that it was Zsasz because he didn't have two faces, and if he was a clown, Mercer was a happy-go-lucky ball of sunshine. Despite all he had seen and done, Alex was still disturbed by the man he was holding. He had no hair, and was very muscular. His skin was coated with scars made to look like tally marks. Alex didn't know how many there were or what they counted. His eyes were completely empty, as if he didn't care about anything at all. Mercer brought one of his sword-like fingers and placed in on one of the ends of Zsasz's neck. "Do unto others what you wish to have done unto you."

"Zeus," a stern voice said behind him. Mercer didn't pull his Claw away, but turned to look and saw the one person who would dress like the man before him did. "Drop him."

Mercer decided to bend that order. He took the Claw at Zsasz's throat away, and then tightened his grip around the murderer's throat. He dropped Zsasz when he was choked into unconsciousness. Mercer then walked over to the man who was supposed to be the protector of this city. The two of them looked up and down one another. Mercer looked over everything about the Batman, who mostly focused his attention on Zeus' Claws.

"What are you?" Batman asked.

"I am going to be this city's true salvation. I'm going to do what you never will."

Batman easily came to realize what Zeus was planning on doing. "Killing them won't make you better than them, Zeus."

"I don't want to be better than them. Hell, I'm probably worse than some of them. I just want to redeem myself, and the way for that is to wipe out the scum in this cesspool off the face of the Earth."

Batman couldn't figure this man out. He says that he's worse than people in the Rogues Gallery, but he wants to make up for something he did before by killing them and protecting people from further harm by their hands. Everything about him was a contradiction with something else about him. "You need help, Zeus."

"And you need to stop holding back." Mercer began to walk away. "How many more lives are you going to let them ruin?" As he passed the unconscious Zsasz, he have the killer a strong, but not lethal, kick in the ribcage.

XXXXXX

Mercer was on the outskirts of Gotham. He was fairly certain that Batman wouldn't try to track or follow him, not with two of his most dangerous and unpredictable enemies on the loose.

He came across an old warehouse, and decided to lay low for the rest of the night. He tried to open the door, but something was sealing it shut. So after two tries to simply open it, he tore it right off of the building and threw it to the side. The inside of the building had no lights on, but the moon illuminated into the huge room enough for Alex to clearly see. And he was shocked by what he saw.

"Are these... plants?" he asked himself. The room was entirely filled with vegetation as thick as trees. It even covered the walls and some hung from the roof. It sort of reminded him of an Infected Hive. He looked to his right and saw a vine as thick as a mature oak tree prodding out of the ground and going right to the roof. It seemed to be pulsating, and had what looked like a few purplish veins going up it. He curiously got the better of him. He formed his Claws and quickly ran one into the gigantic plant. Nothing seeped out like he had expected, but something much worse occurred. The ground beneath him rumbled like a tremor, and a vine suddenly began to wrap around him. Alex freed himself by making spiked tendril shoot out of him which tore the vine to shreds. A high pitched scream filled the building.

"Batman. I'd have thought you'd be too busy dealing with Zsasz and the Clown to harass me tonight," a sensual female voice said. It seemed to come from every direction at the same time. The thick plants began to move around, and a small tunnel was formed by their adjustments. A woman came walking out of it and into the light. Her skin was green like a healthy flower stem, and she had long red hair that had the same shade as a fresh rose. She had on only an oversized red button-down shirt with the word Arkham on one of the shoulders. The shirt was just barely big and long enough for her to keep her modesty. She looked at Mercer with surprise and curiosity. She then observed his Claws. "My mistake. You're not Batman."

"You got that right. People tend to call me Zeus." Alex didn't like this woman. She reeked of nature and trouble, and he hated both. He flexed his Claws and fanned them out to make himself look more threatening than he already was. "And I won't be as... friendly as your flying rodent."

He made his arm change into his Blade, and with one quick swipe, he sliced the vine he used to get her attention completely in half. Once again the earth shook beneath him and a shriek filled the atmosphere around them.

"The plants don't like it when you kill their brothers and sisters," the woman said with a repressed voice filled with anger.

"You make it seem as if they're alive," Mercer said with a smirk. He swung his Blade to the side and cut another vine down. "Guess that makes me a murderer."

The earth shook more violently this time. The woman put her arms into the air, and a platform of vegetation formed beneath her feet. The platform took her into the air. The plants around suddenly began to move, and several new ones began to grow with lightning speed.

"Zeus, prepare to meet your maker," the woman screamed at him. "At the hands of Poison Ivy, but to you, Gaia, Mother Earth!"

Alex readied himself and formed his Blade back into his Claws. They were just as sharp, but much quicker to strike and slice with. "Bring it on. I've always hated gardening."


	2. Hidden Answers

A/N: this particular chapter is dedicated to creeves59 and all the other people who pushed me to go with his suggestion.

XXXXXX

Ivy was fighting a hopeless battle. Zeus would simply swing his Claws in a random direction and kill a number of her plants. This caused her a great amount of pain every time he did it. She didn't even seem to be slowing him down at all. If anything he was becoming even more aggressive.

Mercer hacked and slashed all the vegetation he could with his lethal Claws. He might have looked like he was just sprinting around all guns blazing, but he had a plan. He deduced that every time he cut down one of Ivy's plants, it was like putting a cattle prod on her face, so cutting down and killing several of her 'babies' as she called them would eventually have her focussing more on her 'children' and her pain than on him. A thick vine swooped down from the ceiling and wrapped itself around him. If Alex still needed to be able to breathe, he would have suffocated. He freed himself by making several of his tendrils shoot out of him and cut the plant to ribbons. He earned another shriek from Ivy. He dropped back to the ground and began making his way upwards.

She sent a myriad of thorny vines at him, attempting to shred him to ribbons. He just kept running as they scraped deeply into him. Ivy looked at the vines he had allowed to dig into him, and instead of seeing blood, she found a strange black slime coating them. After running through all the thorns, Zeus changed his right Claw into his Blade, and began running up the thick plants to get close to Ivy. Whenever he met an obstacle, he would either shred it apart, jump past or over it, or cut it down so it made a small incline that assisted him in getting even closer to Ivy. Finally, after nearly eight minutes of slashing, cutting, dodging and trimming, he made his way up to an elevation that was equal with and extremely close to Ivy's leafy vantage point.

Looking at him as his Blade turned back into his Claws, Ivy began to pray that Batman would do his random appearing act, and stop Zeus before he finished his job. She didn't like the Bat at all, but she also desperately didn't want to die, and Zeus looked like he wouldn't take prisons to save his life. Zeus jumped over and onto the shrubbery platform that now kept both of them in the air.

"Time to pull the weeds," he said menacingly as he scraped his individual Clawed fingers along one another, filling the room with an almost metallic ringing.

In an act of great desperation, Ivy quickly put her hands on his shoulders and brought herself up to him and kissed him. After a short second, she pulled away from him. She waited for him to begin suffocating from her poison, but he merely stood there with a confused look. She looked at him in shock.

"Thanks?" Zeus said not understanding what had just happened. He lifted up his right foot, and thrusted it into Ivy's abdomen. She went flying and hit the concrete floor with a loud thud.

Ivy moaned in agony as her vision became blurry. She felt so much burning pain that all she could do was stare straight up to the roof. The plants all over the warehouse began to wither slightly as their mother struggled to stay conscious. Her view allowed her to see Zeus step off of the now half dead platform and land on his feet right next to her. The amount of sound his impact had made suggested he had created a small crater. He stepped over her and dropped to his knees so that he was straddling her. He raised his right Claw into the air and pressed the fingers together so that they formed a lethal spear head. He was about to thrust it into her when he froze. His face said that he was having a fight with both sides of his conscience. After a long moment, he lowered his weaponized limb, and made both of his arms return to normal. He shook his head slowly and let out a defeated sigh.

"You'd better fucking appreciate this," he said to her as he lifted himself up. At that moment, Ivy's world turned completely black.

After Ivy passed out, Mercer carefully picked her up so that he was carrying her in a bridal way. After making sure he had a firm and safe hold on her, he ran out of the warehouse and into the night, making a beeline for Arkham. He knew exactly where the asylum was because he had spent the entire day learning the lay of the land while looking for a place to call his new temporary home.

XXXXXX

"I was just making rounds in the mansion, when suddenly I hear a knock echo through the halls," Jeremiah Arkham started as he led Batman across the grounds of Arkham Island and through the Specific Treatment building. Jeremiah had called the police force, who in return called Batman who raced over to the asylum as fast as he could. "So I run to answer it, and there standing in the dark was a man holding Miss Isley like she was precious to him. He asked if she could be treated for her injuries here. Once I answered yes, he gently lowered her down, and then walked off into the dark without another word."

"What did he look like?" Batman asked. "What was he wearing?" He had a suspicion that only one man could do this to someone as powerful and dangerous as Poison Ivy.

"I couldn't get a good look at his face because of it being the middle of the night, and the hood on his head didn't help either. As for his getup, a leather jacket, the brown hooded sweatshirt, and a white button-down shirt. Jeans." He looked forward and stopped, as did Batman. He pointed to the specially designed cell that had extremely thick bullet proof glass for walls. Batman stepped up to the transparent barrier and looked inside to see Poison Ivy lying down and covered in a bed fast asleep. Jeremiah left the room. He didn't want to get wrapped into this madness.

"Pamela," Batman said through an intercom on the glass wall as he knocked on it. Ivy lifted her head slowly and saw him. "I want to talk about Zeus."

"He almost killed me. What else is there?" she asked as she slowly and somewhat painfully lifted herself up into a sitting position.

"'Almost' is the key here. I've run into him myself. One of the first things he ever said to me was his intentions of killing all the villains in Gotham. He almost took out Zsasz effortlessly before running into you."

"Why does he want to kill all of us? Is he some kind of sadist looking to make a name for himself? Become more feared than the Clown?"

Batman shook his head. "Just the opposite. He's trying to achieve redemption for something he did before coming here. He claims to be worse than some of you. But the major question is why did he force himself to spare you, and then go out of his way to bring you to the only people who can actually help you? What did you do to him?"

"Nothing that would inspire or motivate him to lift a finger to help me. I did nothing but try to kill him."

"Did you kiss him?" Batman knew firsthand that a kiss from Poison Ivy meant either mind control or a swift but still agonizing death and was curious if it had any affects on Zeus.

Ivy nodded. "He stared at me for a moment, thanked me awkwardly, and kicked me down to the floor. Then he landed next to me, got on top of me, and prepared to shove his dagger fingers into me, but I think an inner conflict stopped him."

"I think I know why. He probably feels a small connection with you."

"Why? We never even knew the other existed before a few hours ago."

Batman didn't have a definite answer for her. He turned and made his way out of the building and made his way to a now conscious and heavily restrained Zsasz inside the Intensive Treatment building.

"What can I do for you, Batman?" the sociopath asked from inside his highly secured cell. "Here to learn about your friend Zeus?" He knew the Caped Crusader wouldn't have any other reason to see him.

Batman now knew Zeus was a force to be reckoned with. Zsasz almost never called anyone except Batman and some of the super-villains by their names or aliases; he almost always called people zombies or pigs, and viewed them as such. To say anyone whom Zsasz saw as an actual person was dangerous was the understatement of the year.

"What happened before I arrived to stop him Victor?" Batman wanted to know all he could about this new vigilante. He currently had Oracle running a scan on his facial features captured by the security cameras that had footage of him when he dropped off Ivy to try and find out who he really was. Nightwing and Robin (Tim Drake) were currently out in the city looking for him in case he decided to blow off some steam. Damian was safe in Wayne manor since his father felt that even though he had been trained to be a killer since birth, he still wouldn't stand a chance against Zeus.

"I was free, and felt an irrepressible need to add another mark to my current amount. Then I saw him, standing in front of multiple televisions, learning that I and two others were now on the loose. I decided to release him from his pointless existence and sliced open his neck. I got ready to add the tally on my arm, but I noticed that he was still standing up. He thrusted his arms and shoulders back, and I felt a tremendous amount of force push me back into a wall across the street. I waited for my dizziness to clear, and I saw him walking towards me. His neck looked perfect, like nothing had happened to it at all. He now had a strange spiked armor on his arms, and his fingers had become swords. He grasped me and raised me into the air like I was nothing, and then put one of his swords on my neck. He was about to do to me what I had attempted to do to him. Then you came along, and you know the rest. Personally, I'm glad that he struck me when he did, otherwise my count would be off."

Batman looked at Zsasz intently and silently for a moment, and then walked off and returned to the Batmobile. While speeding down the ancient and deserted roads, he sent out a call for Oracle.

"Oracle, I think I know why Zeus stopped himself from killing Ivy."

"What is it? You said he wanted to wipe Gotham clean."

"Yes, but I think he had a personal reason not to kill her. Zsasz told me about his encounter with Zeus, and it was more revealing than I expected."

"What did he tell you?"

"Basically, he told me that Zeus isn't human. At least not entirely."

"What makes you say that?" Oracle was starting to get extremely curious and confused.

"Zsasz drove his knife into Zeus' throat, and dragged it the entire way across. Right after his neck had been torn completely open, Zeus merely flexed his arms back into Zsasz, and sent him soaring a hundred feet into a solid wall. After that, Zeus then had the same armor on his arms the woman described. He picked up Zsasz as if he weighed no more than a feather."

"Wow, this guy is not one to mess around with. Good thing he wants to kill all your enemies and not you."

"I'm actually relieved about that too," Batman admitted.

"But what does any of this have to do with him saving Ivy?" Oracle asked getting back to the original matter.

"I could tell that he thought of himself as a man with nothing to lose and had decided he should do all he could to make up for whatever he did. But he felt that was what he HAD to do, and he actually wanted something else. I think he wants to be accepted by someone, and since he and Ivy are both so inhuman, he sees her as someone he could relate to."

"Or she could have simply put him under her control to save her." Oracle didn't believe that anyone alive could feel a positive connection to the half-plant eco-terrorist without being completely at her mercy.

"No. She told me that she tried to stop him with a kiss, and he responded by thanking and then viciously kicking her."

"Wow. Not even YOU can resist her at times."

"I know." He then felt a microscopic sense if doubt. Anyone who couldn't be controlled or poisoned by Poison Ivy either wasn't human, or had an unbreakable will. Batman began to think Zeus had that sort of commitment and determination, or stubbornness, and wouldn't stop himself from doing what he planned to a second time.

XXXXXX

"I'm only going to ask you this once," Mercer said to the gangster he was holding in the air with his Clawed arm. After leaving Ivy at the asylum, he had set out to continue with his agenda. Finding the thugs wasn't hard, and maiming them was just plain easy. The man he was grasping by the neck was the only one who was still conscious with no shattered bones. "Who controls the city's underground?"

"Well there's a few guys," the punk answered with a panicky voice. He was sweating bullets and was scared halfway to his grave.

"Names," Mercer demanded. When the thug hesitated, he tightened his grip and made it impossible for his victim to breathe for a few seconds.

"Okay! Okay!" he said gasping for air. Mercer allowed him to receive oxygen again. "It's mostly Black Mask and the Penguin. They run the show!"

"Thanks." Instead of using up anymore of his time demanding for more answers, Mercer thrusted his free Claw into the gangster's head, impaling him in four vital places, and proceeded to Consume him. The man didn't know the whereabouts of Black Mask, but he knew exactly where to find the Penguin when he wasn't stealing something.

As he walked away from the numerous broken bodies, he stomped on one of them and his foot went right through the man's back. Mercer consumed him as well and took his gun.

"What kind of city has common street thugs that carry automatic rifles?" he asked himself as he checked the amount of ammo the firearm had left. He had mauled the gun's holder before he could even fire off one round.

XXXXXX

Oswald Cobblepot was happily sitting in his private office on the upper floor of his Iceberg Lounge. He had just sealed the deal on a multi-million dollar black arms exchange. He lit himself a cigar and casually glanced at the security monitors when one of them caught his eye. Normally it would have been nothing special; it was just a random man standing outside the front doors, except this particular person had an automatic assault rifle in his hands, but that wasn't the detail that had caught Cobblepot's attention. It was his arms. They were pitch black with random red streaks and blots, and his fingers were like small swords.

"Isn't he that... Zeus person?" Cobblepot wondered out loud. He watched as Zeus kicked open the front doors and aimed his weapon inside the building. The Penguin instantly sounded the alarm, and grabbed one of his weaponized umbrellas as he made his way to the door. "I think that god needs to be brought back down to Earth."

XXXXXX

Zeus fired off a few warning shots as he walked into the club. Some people screamed, but all of them gave him their attention.

"Where is Cobblepot?" he shouted loud enough for everyone in the building to hear. He then heard a series of rapid clicks, and looked around to see several men in suits pointing a variety of guns at him.

"Looking for a job, Zeus?" He looked up to the upper level and saw a short, almost obese man in a classic suit and top-hat. For a reason Zeus couldn't come up with, the man was pointing the tip of an umbrella at him. "I like men like you. Fearless. Battle-ready. A horrible sense of self-preservation." He let out an annoying squawk-like laugh.

In response, Zeus fired a bullet into the head of the goon closest to him, and then more than thirty armed men and their boss began firing at him.

XXXXXX

A/N: One of the Prototype comics clearly indicates that Mercer can still develop a liking towards a woman.


	3. A Brief Stint In Arkham Asylum

Alex just stood in the same spot while all the armed henchmen emptied their magazines into him. Finally, when all of them ran out of bullets, they were all shocked.

"How the Hell is he not dead?"

"Did we all miss?"

"Is he a hologram?"

"Were we using blanks?"

"Are you all done?" Zeus asked all of them. "Because now it's my turn."

He threw his rifle at a random goon, and it struck him in the head with so much force his skull cracked open. While all of them stood in amazement at the amount of his strength, Zeus formed his Whipfist, and lashed it in front of him in a wicked arch. The single swipe took out about twenty of the gunmen.

"What the Hell do we do now boss?!" an almost catatonic thug cried out to the Penguin.

"Just keep putting' lead in 'im!" their boss shouted as he fired a small rocket out of his umbrella. Zeus saw it coming at him, and dove to his left, and the missile exploded on the ground next to him.

"Don't just stare at him you idiots!" the Penguin shouted. Zeus heard the familiar sound of a large weapon being prepared to fire. He looked to his side and saw another goon about to fire an RPG at him. He launched his Whipfist at the gunman, and the grapple end struck him in the chest. Zeus made the Whip retract, and it brought both the man and his weapon towards him. As they flew towards him, Zeus made his free arm Clawed, and when the thug was close enough, he made quick work of him. He tossed the henchman aside and aimed the rocket launcher towards the Penguin and his remaining men's balcony on the upper level.

"Oh Hell," Penguin grumbled as the missile came towards him and his men.

Zeus enjoyed hearing their shouts to run right before the impact, and watched all of them fall to the floor he was on. When all of them finally landed, he built up a massive amount of energy, and when he released it, several tendrils shot out of him, and he willed them to take care of all the men except Cobblepot.

The Penguin coughed as the debris began to settle. He saw Zeus calmly walking towards him with black and red spiked gauntlets on his arms, and he desperately grabbed his umbrella. He aimed it at Zeus and fired another missile at him. When it exploded on his chest, Zeus stumbled back a few steps and successfully regained his footing. He looked even more threatening than before now that anger was in his eyes. Penguin pulled the trigger again, but he was out of rockets. His face lost all color and hope as Zeus stood over him.

"Alright, what do ya want?" he desperately asked. "Money? Weapons? Connections? Women?"

Zeus grabbed him by the neck and lifted him into the air. "You're going to give me everything..."

XXXXXX

Batman and Commissioner Gordon were the only ones still at the Iceberg Lounge. The crime scene had been taped off, checked, and cleared. All of the victims were cleared out of the building. Nobody had found any trace of Oswald Cobblepot.

"You'd think that after all the things we've seen and been through that something like this wouldn't surprise me," Gordon said as he looked at the destroyed balcony. "But still... ONE man took out the Penguin and thirty of his payroll?"

"That's just it Commissioner," Batman said over to him as he looked for anything they might have missed. "Zeus isn't an ordinary man. After all, what kind of 'man' can almost kill a serial murderer AFTER said murderer killed him?"

"I know. But that doesn't explain the lack of... everything on Cobblepot. There's literally nothing. No body, no blood, no trail, no sign that he left. It's as if he just..."

"Vanished", the two of them said in unison. Suddenly, Batman saw something that definitely didn't belong where it was. Several small drops of a strange black ooze were splattered on the floor near the front door. He carefully knelt down and collected a few of them and put them in a secure transparent container, which he then held up to his eye.

"What is that?" Gordon asked after he walked over and observed the container as well.

"It belongs to Zeus."

"That guy bleeds black?" Gordon asked with a startled tone.

"I don't think it's his blood." He put the container on his utility belt and looked right at Gordon. "I think it's an actual piece of him."

XXXXXX

"I still find it hard to believe this city keeps almost ALL the villains in one place." Mercer stood on a high rooftop looking at Arkham Island. He knew some of them were kept their, but the Penguin had revealed to him that very few of them WEREN'T incarcerated in it. "Sure makes my job a Hell of a lot easier." He tensed his legs and launched himself towards the asylum.

XXXXXX

"Batman, are you there?"

"Yes Oracle, did you find something?" He was speeding across town in the Batmobile headed back to the Cave to analyze the ooze he had collected in the Iceberg Lounge

"Well I got good news... and I got weird news about our friend Zeus."

"What's the good news?"

"Really? We're going with good first? Okay, I dug as deep as I could, and then kept going, and I found a perfect match on who he is; Alex J. Mercer. He was an important researcher for a company called Gentek. He was incredibly smart. Years ahead of everyone else."

"Gentek?" With all his business connections, he wasn't very familiar with the company.

"Yeah, those guys were the definition of 'invitation only'. Secretive to no end. From what little I found on them, they specialized on bio-weaponry."

"What's the weird news?"

"Well... according to their records... Mercer is dead."

XXXXXX

Jeremiah Arkham looked at the man who called himself Alex Mercer with disbelief. The hooded man had just told him a very... interesting backstory about his life in Manhattan.

"A virus..." he said. "You're... a sapient virus."

Alex nodded.

"And you saved Manhattan from nuclear annihilation after unleashing a deadly infectious bio-weapon."

"Was I not clear on that part?" Mercer asked dryly.

"No no. You said it with excellent depth and detail. And you also say that the reason you left was because you could no longer handle being in a place where you were labeled as a monster... by a top secret under-the-radar army, who tried to nuke the city and created an airborne poison just to kill you?"

"That is correct Dr. Arkham. Everybody hated and feared me. I guess I just couldn't take it anymore.

"Well that's..." He couldn't think of a word to accurately describe his opinion of the man's tale. He thought the man sitting across the desk from him was so out of it he could give the Joker a run for his money. He changed the subject. "So anyway, why did you choose to come to Gotham? There are plenty of other places to seek peace in, and a lot of them are further away from the place where you consider yourself a pariah."

"First off, they know I'm a pariah, because I know I am. And I choose your city because one hears things about how it's so ruled by crime that a man in a rubber suit goes out every night and beats the Hell out of crooks and freaks. I came here because I figure if I could save a city as... let's say hopeless as yours, I could achieve my redemption and make up for the whole mess in New York."

"Why would you need to find redemption?"

"Because the breakout was all my fault!" Alex snapped at him. "I killed millions of innocent people and even put my own sister in mortal danger!" He stared at Jeremiah for a long moment, breathing heavily with his teeth bared. After a silent while, he relaxed and leaned back into the chair.

"Well Mr. Mercer, I've seen and heard many things in these walls, but I have never said this to anyone within them; you made an excellent choice coming here to seek help. Welcome to the Elizabeth Arkham Hospital For The Criminally Insane."

"Do I get any treats since I made an 'excellent choice'?"

"Well, you do seem to be more stable and have more... control over yourself than most of our other patients. I suppose we could make an agreement."

"Does free reign over where I go on the island sound alright?"

Jeremiah pressed his fingers together as he went into deep consideration. After about half a minute, he looked back at Alex. "I think that's reasonable, but with a few conditions of course."

"Of course," Alex agreed flatly.

"So long as you never miss a single private or group session, never try to leave the island, don't interfere with security, return to your cell by an adequate hour, and don't kill any of your fellow patients, we have a deal."

"I'm alright with all of those." Mercer was offered Jeremiah's hand, and he shook it, sealing their agreement. And he really was alright with every single condition. He wouldn't take out any of the super-villain inmates until he memorized every single detail of the entire island, and came up with an unstoppable failure-proof plan. Manhattan had taught him that strategy should always come before first strike.

XXXXXX

Alex sat on the bed in his new cell. They had given him an orange short-sleeved jumpsuit, as was the standard clothing for patients in the asylum. He had tossed the original one they had given him and made his biomass clothes change into an identical copy, except he took the time to add a hood on it. He wanted everyone who was now trapped in the loony bin with him to know that they weren't on the same level as him and that he was more in control of his situation, and to recognize the hood as a sign that he was around, and probably intended on either maiming or Consuming them.

He looked through the steel bars that were supposed to keep him in the small square room when he was supposed to be inside of it; they would fail their purpose miserably whenever he felt like moving around at night since he never slept anymore. He looked across the hall and into the cell of his 'neighbor' as is what the term was. She had the palest skin he had ever seen, or at least he thought she was pale, and her hair was symmetrically divided right down the middle; the left half was somewhere between an very dark navy blue and shiny black, and the right was a dark cherry red. She had a carefree and giddy smile on her lips and was humming a cheerful but random tune as she looked off into space. The back wall of her cell had numerous pictures of the Joker on it, and all of them were decorated with several kiss marks left by both a red and a black lipstick.

Her random head movements eventually led her to look at him as he looked back right at her with his light scowl. "Why so glum, hoodie? Say, why do you get a hood? Why are YOU so special?" she asked in a happy and somewhat singsong voice.

"You don't want to know," he said back to her flatly.

"Alrighty then. But why are you so gloomy?"

"Why are you so happy?" he shot back.

"I'm just always happy! I don't see a reason not to be."

"How about the fact that we are inside an insane asylum? Or what about the guards can get away with treating us like rabid animals?"

"Oh I get it!" she giggled. "Your one of those guys who only looks at the bad stuff!"

"A pessimist?" he said with boredom. "I am not one. And I'm not insane either. Unlike you." He said the last part under his breath.

She laughed. "If you're not kooky, why are ya in here?"

"Because I want to be," he told her.

She laughed again. "You just sorta cancelled yerself out! You'd HAVE to be nutty to WANT to be in here!" She struggled to keep her laughter under control. "I like you. Yer weird like Mistah J."

"Really?" he said sarcastically. He figured that by 'Mistah J' she meant the Joker. "I don't see myself laughing at everything I see."

Again she giggled. "Yer funny! I'm Harley."

He looked at her carefully, and then decided to tell her his real name since she would probably forget it in five minutes. "Mercer."

He then chose to get some air. Plus he felt like the crazy girl would cause him to lose IQ points if they continued their idle conversation. He lifted himself up off the bed and gently pushed the unlocked cell door open. Harley looked at him with her eyes twice as big as before.

"How did you do that Merce?" she asked in amazement.

"I pushed it open," he said. "They didn't lock it and they don't care where I go. And please don't ever call me that again.

She looked at him with a face that was pouting and contained traces of jealousy. "Why not?" she whined.

"Because like I said, I'm not crazy." He smirked at her and walked off.

"That's not the question I wanted you to answer!" she called out to him.

XXXXXX

Alex walked out the front doors of the Intensive Treatment building. The guards clearly saw him, and they wished him a nice afternoon. He looked up to the partly cloudy sky as he made his way to Specific Treatment.

"Are all people so... feeble minded?" he asked himself. He looked around to see if anyone was around, but then he realized it wouldn't have mattered if people saw him having a conversation with himself since he was already in an insane asylum. "I tell him nothing but the truth and he concludes that it was nothing but a story pieced together by an unstable mind. I know that people have always feared things they don't understand, but would they purposely lie to themselves and say a strange truth is just a maniac's fantasy?" Even though he had once been human, he was the closest thing to an entirely sane sociopath his entire life, so he never really understood how a person's mind works. He shook off the thoughts as he entered the building.

XXXXXX

Poison Ivy was lying down in her custom cell, still somewhat damaged from her brawl with Zeus.

Suddenly, she heard knocking on the glass and a voice speaking to her through the intercom.

"Hello, mon hiver a augmenté."

She lifted herself up into a sitting position, and was shocked by who she saw. Even though he was now wearing the asylum's jumpsuit, she could tell by the hood on it and his stature that Zeus was standing on the other side of the walls of her cell.

XXXXXX

Two weeks later...

Mercer was in a small group therapy session with three other men. He really didn't want to be there at all, let alone with people who were actually crazy, but he still somewhat needed to come up with a plan to manipulate and exploit the many twisted halls and rooms of the asylum buildings to annihilate almost all the villains locked up in there with him. Plus two of the people in the session with him were on his primary hit-list. Sitting to his right was Dr. Jonathan Crane, better known nowadays as the Scarecrow. On Mercer's left was Edward Nigma, known mostly as the Riddler. On Edward's left was a middle aged, half bald man named Arnold Wesker, better known as the Ventriloquist. What made him the strangest out of the group was that he had a dummy dressed like Al Capone that he called Scarface, and had been talking through it the entire time. The four of them were sitting in a curve and were all facing an asylum doctor, who was a somewhat elderly man with very long silver hair. All of them just went to calling him Doc, and he didn't seem to mind.

"So Arnold, how are you feeling today?" Doc asked. "Calm? Happy? Nonchalant?"

"I'm feelin' annoyed Doc," Scarface answered for his holder. "An' it's all 'cause of Mr. Constantly-pissed-lookin'-fah-no-reason." The dummy waved his wooden arm at Alex and Arnold glanced over at him nervously.

"What did I do now, Wesker?" Alex asked the man, not the dummy, with boredom. He noticed that almost everyone who talked to the Ventriloquist mostly held the conversation with Scarface. That further proved his point that he truly didn't belong in there with all the freaks. He actually realized and remembered that Arnold was the one who controlled what Scarface said, and all the other inmates said that the dummy was the one pulling the strings between the two of them. He was a walking biomass of disease, and yet he was the most rational thing on the whole island.

"Yer always just sittin' there with that stupid angry and bored look a' yers, thinkin' yer so high n' mighty." If he only knew. "The freakin' Joker has more expressions than ya! Well I'm sick a' it. I bet I could kick yer ass with my eyes shut!"

"I wouldn't try if I were you," Alex said dryly. "I'd hate to send you to the morgue."

"Ya see Doc?!" Scarface turned to look at their therapist, who has been looking on with silent interest. "Even when he makes threats he keeps the same freakin' face!"

"Maybe he just doesn't care enough to give you a reaction," Nigma suggested.

"Oh yeah?" The dummy again looked at Alex. "Well maybe you'll 'care' if once I get outta here, I go find ya sistah, an' make her my bitch!" Arnold looked at his puppet with an expression of pure shock.

"You motherfucking!..." Alex jolted out of his seat, and fought with all his will to not slice both the dummy and the man to pieces right then and there. Arnold held up his free arm in front of him in fear while Scarface gestured for Mercer to bring it on.

"Alex," Doc said with a calming tone. "Remember to control your outbursts. Violence will not solve anything."

Mercer didn't believe that. Back in Manhattan almost all his problems had been solved with violence. However, he couldn't afford to expose himself now and lose the element of surprise, so he breathed deeply, and sat back down.

"I sincerely apologize, Mr. Mercer," Arnold said in an honest but nervous voice.

"You ever say something like that again, I'll throw that fucking dummy into a wood chipper, and then light what's left on fire."

"So you fear for your sister..." Crane said under his breath.

"Gentlemen, I fear we have to draw this to a close," Doc said looking at his wrist watch. "But before we depart, let me ask you something; what one word comes to mind when you think of your fellow humans?"

None of them could fathom why Doc would ask such a random question, but they all thought deeply for a minute, and then Crane, Scarface, Nigma, and Mercer gave an answer respectively.

"Paranoid."

"Lazy."

"Idiotic."

"Weak."

XXXXXX

Mercer walked down the hallway marked "Incurable" looking for two cells; one he knew was filled, and one was empty. Right behind him was the personal guard who had been hired to do nothing but follow him around and closely observe whatever he did. Apparently Jeremiah Arkham added another condition to their deal. The two of them made their way down to the far end of the hall where two armed guards stood on either side of a solid steel door. As Mercer and his shadow of a guard stepped in front of them, the one the left looked down at them.

"I request a private audience with Zsasz," Mercer stated to the guard, who then looked over to his partner. They stared at each other for a moment and shrugged their shoulders. They didn't care at all if Zsasz tore apart an inmate, just so long as it wasn't a sane person. They undid several locks on the door, and stepped aside to let him in. His private guard tried to follow him, but Alex held out his arm and blocked him from going any farther. Mercer shook his head slowly, and gently shoved him back and stepped into the room. The door closed with a very loud slam behind him and he looked around the room; there was nothing to see. The only things in the room were a sink, toilet, and a slab in the very middle of the small space Zsasz called home.

The sociopath was lying down on the slab, but he sat up when he heard the door shut. He looked at Mercer with a confused look while Mercer looked back at him with a faint scowl. He stood up and just kept looking at Mercer. He had on a straight jacket that had several more buckles and locks than a normal one. His feet were bare and shackled together. A pair of orange pants covered his legs. Several chains were connected to his clothes and to the walls.

"I've heard things about you," Alex said to him. "Had to see if they were true."

"What kind of... things?" Zsasz asked as he slowly approached Mercer. The chains on his back stopped him when he was about six feet away from Mercer. He leaned forward as far as he could, wanting to get as close a look as he could at the man who wasn't afraid of him at all. The two of them saw a trace of bloodlust in each other's eyes.

"That you are covered with self-inflicted scars. I can clearly that's true." He looked over all the exposed flesh of Zsasz, and saw lines permanently embedded in his skin everywhere. "Do they mean anything, or do you just get bored?"

"Oh no, it's not out of boredom. It's out of liberation."

"Liberation?" With all the things he had seen, Alex was still intrigued by how messed up this man was.

"Every single mark on my body represents a zombie that once walked this Earth that I released from its pointless existence." He seemed to bask in some horrific memories.

"Pointless existence?" Alex began to see Zsasz as more and more screw-loose every second. "Why would their lives be pointless?" Mercer thought everybody had a place in life, even if it was providing him with a perfect disguise.

"My young acquaintance, everything is pointless. Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing. The pigs that I free from their stagnant prison are thanking me every passing second."

"If nothing matters then why are you still here?" Mercer was now extremely interested as to why Zsasz hadn't committed suicide if he saw everything as pointless.

"Because if I don't do it nobody will. Everyone will stay stuck with this pathetic life of theirs."

"Uh huh. So what makes you think that?"

"Well it's a very long story."

"I've got time." The more Mercer knew, the easier it would be for him to kill this... animal when the time came.

XXXXXX

"And as the life left his eyes, he taught me that it all will always be for nothing. For his second reward, his mark became my very first. I'd show you if I could, but it's located on my arm unfortunately."

"Fascinating. So do you have a mark planned for the Batman?" Mercer knew that almost all the inmates in Arkham were there because they had been caught by the Caped Crusader. He would have to thank the Batman sometime in the future for putting the majority f his prey in one single place.

"Actually yes. It's the inside of my left eyelid."

Mercer, despite having just heard one of the most depressing and insane stories ever, was somewhat surprised by that statement. "... Why?"

"Because it'll constantly remind me of him. Once the scar tissue builds up and hardens, it'll scrape against the jelly of my eye like steel wool every time I close my eyes or blink, and every time I'll be reminded of what an irritating, unbearable, irrepressible nuisance his was."

Mercer smirked at him. "No offense Vic, but if you ask me, you'll never get that mark. If you've never managed to kill him before, why would any of your future attempts be any different?"

Now Zsasz had a creepy smile of his own. "I suggest that you try not to get on my bad side, boy. The only thing for me to do on here is isometrics all damn day, and you seem to have forgotten that you are trapped in here with me until the guards decide to come back."

"On the contrary, Mr. Zsasz, you have it completely wrong." Mercer's right arm shot out with lightning speed and wrapped around Zsasz's exposed neck with a force comparable to the jaws of life. Zsasz stared at him with wide eyes as Mercer made his claws cover the arm he had Zsasz in. "You're trapped in here... with me."

"You... you are..." Zsasz couldn't form words.

"That's right, Vic. The mighty Zeus is in Arkham Asylum. And the best part is..." He could hear the guards returning to the door to let him out. He let go of Zsasz and made his arm return to normal. "Nobody, right mind or not, will believe you over me." He smirked again as the huge door opened. He left Zsasz alone with a look of shock and horror. He walked off down the hall feeling quite accomplished, but little did he know that his private guard had watched the whole thing unfold. He looked around to make sure he was alone once he and Mercer were outside, and then waited for Mercer to go to Specific Treatment like he always did when he had free time. Once he was alone outside, the guard pulled out an extremely special cell phone and pressed one number and brought it up to speak into it.

"I have confirmed that Alex Mercer is Zeus, Ms. Waller."

XXXXXX

It was the middle of the night and it was raining hard as thunder filled the atmosphere with almost deafening volumes. Batman was cruising quickly all over town on patrol in the Batmobile. Something wasn't right; ever since his escape, neither the Joker nor Two-Face had done literally anything. Batman was honestly worried that Mercer had gotten his hands on them. Mercer's quietness also worried him. Mercer didn't seem like the type to just do nothing for a long time.

Suddenly he received a frantic call from Oracle. "Batman, once again I have both good and bad news."

"What's the bad news?"

"Joker just brought himself out of the dark. He somehow hacked into every radio frequency in the city, and said how he was the premiere villain with a theme, and now that every villain has one, he says they're all freeloaders who don't deserve the attention they get. He claims that he should always be the center of all the spotlights. He also said that those who have been around as long as he has also get in the way. So he said he was going to 'eliminate the competition' to get his 'royalties' or something. Do you have any clue what he's up to?"

After pondering what he had been told, Batman made the car swerve around completely and began rocketing off in the opposite direction. "I know exactly what he's planning. What's the good news? Did we finally learn something from that slime that fell off of Mercer?"

"No, Alfred and Nightwing are still running some tests, but it does involve Mercer. He used his own name to check himself into Arkham, and according to the records he hasn't left yet."

"This night can go either very smoothly, or it can end in complete disaster. I just have to get to Joker before Mercer does."

"Why would Mercer be a problem with this?"

"Because Joker is headed exactly where Mercer is waiting for him."

XXXXXX

Mercer was standing in the rain outside on the very edge of the island, watching the waves from the ocean crash into the cliff he was on top of. He couldn't stand being in his cell any longer that night because Harley began screaming with joy after she claimed to have heard the Joker on the radio. He found her extremely unbearable. He couldn't imagine how the Joker managed to put up with her.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He felt the coolness of the rain impact his face. Even though he was a heap of biomass, he still had all five of his senses. He still felt emotions and wants. For example, he almost lost himself in the urge to kill Zsasz when his claw was tightly wrapped around the monster's neck, but his fear of being exposed and labeled as a monster himself yet again made it possible for him to withhold himself.

He let his mind drift off on its own. As it now always did, his brain fed his vision with memories of Poison Ivy. For a reason he knew but feared, she was almost always on his mind. For a while, he couldn't figure out what had stopped him from driving his lethal claws into her head, but now he knew exactly what did.

At that moment, his eyes shot open when an insane fit of laughter echoed all throughout the island. He changed his biomass clothes back into his usual attire and formed his claws on both arms.

"Welcome home Joker. It'll also be your grave..."

XXXXXX

Joker walked through the front gate of Arkham carrying a silver walking stick. He joyfully strolled towards the asylum's buildings with about fifty of his men following right behind him. Every single one of them was armed to the teeth.

"Boys!" Joker happily shouted over the thunder. "Let's get this show on the road!"


	4. Don't Die On Me

Joker and about ten of his men walked into the room containing Poison Ivy's cell. It was filled with a thick red mist that made it impossible to see inside. Joker didn't know what it was for, and he didn't care. He tapped the end of his metal walking stick on the glass and moved his head over to the intercom.

"Hello? Anybody home?" he asked in his usual joyful voice.

Ivy then appeared from the mist and approached the glass. She was surprised to see Joker; nobody had said anything about him in a long time. "What are you doing here Clown?"

"What? Didn't you hear my big radio debut?" His smile didn't waver. He already knew her answer.

She raised a confused eyebrow. "No, I didn't." She didn't like where this was going. Then again, she didn't like anything that involved the Clown Prince of Chaos.

He let out a long fit of hysterical giggles. "Then this'll all be new to you!" He continued laughing as he and his men turned around and left. Ivy now knew that he was going to try and kill her.

Ivy pressed her hands firmly on the glass and shouted after the clown. "What are you doing you freak?! What's your scheme this time?! Tell me what you're up to!"

Joker just continued laughing uncontrollably and strolled out of the room with his men in tow. She then felt that something wasn't right in her cell. She was suddenly feeling... sick. She turned around and saw that the red mist that usually filled her cell was slowly being replaced with a green one.

XXXXXX

Batman jumped out of the Batmobile and sprinted towards Arkham Mansion. He had to track down two separate men who were extremely dangerous as quickly as he could before one of them began killing everything in his path to get to the other. Just as he was about to storm through the front door, a man went flying out of a window from inside and landed in the rain. Batman looked over to the nearly unconscious man; it was clear that he had been through hell just then. Suddenly another man jumped out of the window the first had gone through, and Batman recognized him instantly due to the black spiked arms. Mercer landed about ten feet behind the other man, who Batman looked closer at and saw that he was a Joker thug. The goon was now on his hands and knees crawling away and begging for mercy. Mercer raised his right claw in the air and then drove it into the ground. In the next instant a tight cluster of gray spikes shot out of the ground and impaled the thug. The spikes were so large that when the receded back into the ground and Mercer took his claw out as well, the man was in two pieces.

Mercer paid no mind to the man he had just brutally killed. The man worked for and killed for a genocidal clown who was nothing more than a rabid animal Mercer needed to put down. He flexed his claws and began walking away. He didn't get far before something captured his undivided attention.

"Mercer!"

He froze in place. Even though it was raining cats and dogs, and the thunder never stopped, Alex was positive that he had just heard someone call out his name. His real name. He turned around rapidly in circles, the noise of the weather made it impossible to know where the sound originated, to see who knew he was Zeus. He looked all over the darkness ahead of him and saw nothing. He then looked behind him towards the front steps of the building he had just scoured looking for the Joker. He was relieved and surprised to see Batman; he thought it would have been a military officer or a reporter. He and the Batman stared into each other's eyes for a moment, and Mercer broke it off when he walked away towards another one of the buildings to continue his hunt for his white-skinned prey.

"How do you know my name, Batman?" Mercer knew that the Batman wasn't going to just let him walk away and turned his head to the side and sure enough, the Dark Knight was walking next to him and looking at him intently.

"Most people wanting to keep a low profile while conducting their plans might use a fake name when checking themselves into an asylum." Batman replied with nothing but seriousness.

"Yeah, I guess so," Alex said realizing his mistake. "Anyway, we both know why the other is here, so let me say that he isn't in the mansion."

"How many men did you kill inside it?" While Batman was somewhat grateful for knowing that Joker hadn't been found by Mercer yet, he still knew how Mercer was conducting his search.

"I don't know. You think I keep count?" He knew what was about to be said to him, and he didn't wait to hear even one syllable of Batman's lecture on the wrongs of killing. "Listen, you can either follow me around and fruitlessly try to coax me out of my way of doing what I do, or you can do what you really want and go and try to find the Clown before I do."

Batman saw Mercer's point and decided to act on it, but first he had to know something. "Do you see what you do as fun?"

Mercer stopped walking. "No..." He cracked his neck and again flexed his claws. "I see it as necessary." He started moving again. He began running and disappeared into the darkness and the veil of water.

Batman was relieved to know that Mercer didn't kill for his own amusement, but still wished he could somehow convince the antihero that he should never take a life. He admitted to himself that the Joker needed to be found, favorably by him, and turned around and ran off in the opposite direction Mercer had towards the Intensive Treatment building.

XXXXXX

Joker made his way around the Intensive Treatment building all while laughing to himself with his mouth closed. Whenever he crossed paths with someone, he nonchalantly shot them and either killed them or left them to die. He was hoping that what he heard had been true about Zeus.

"That guy and Batsy could throw one helluva party!" He cackled to himself. He casually walked further and further into the building, wondering who would find him first; Batman or Zeus.

XXXXXX

Mercer crushed the doors to Specific Treatment with a flick of his clawed wrist. He walked in and looked around for any more Joker goons. He found none, but that only made him more alert. He also took note that they had apparently shut off the power since it was almost completely dark except for a few emergency lights that lit up every room and hall dimly. He walked through the many twisting and turning halls, still not finding anyone. He was standing in the middle of one of the halls, thinking about whether or not to just make the building collapse on itself. He decided against it when he heard a very frantic and disturbing voice behind him.

"Yer a demon! Yer here to rape my soul!"

Alex turned around and saw what was obviously a loose inmate. He had on shredded pants, no shoes but socks, a torn straight jacket so that his arms were free, and a white cloth wrapped around his head. He was standing about thirty feet away from Mercer, looking at him with blatant fear. He then became very angry looking.

"Well maybe I kill ya an' rape ya with ya own freak arms!"

Mercer held up his still clawed hands and gestured for the possible lobotomy patient to slow down. "Sir, I want you to turn around, walk away, and forget you saw me." he said in a calm voice. He didn't want this man to rush to his own grave, and he really didn't want to kill anyone who wasn't killing anyone else.

The inmate seemed to ponder and consider Mercer's request. Then he began running towards Alex with his arms flailing all over and his voice screaming like a wild mad animal. When he tried to punch Mercer, the clawed predator dodged him without effort. The inmate then turned around and again tried to land a blow on Mercer all to no avail.

Mercer knew he had to find a solution to this as fast as he could. He was wasting valuable time with this inmate, but he had to find a complex and difficult to achieve way to end this without killing him. He was so deep in thought that it took him a second to realize that the rabid screams of the inmate had ceased. He felt something on his left arm, and looked over to see that inmate was no longer with him; he had tried to tackle Alex to the ground and charged right into his spiked arm, which impaled him in several places all along his upper body and head. He was so stuck on Mercer's arm with all the black thorns that were still inside of him that Alex had to slide his other hand between the inmate's body and his own arm, and pushed him away and off of him. Mercer spent one second looking down at the world's newest corpse before moving on, making his way deeper into the building. He had chosen not to kill the inmate, and yet the man still wound up dead. Things had to change... quickly.

He made his way through several rooms, not running into anyone else for a long time until he reached a room that led even deeper into the dark maze, and also led to the control room of the entire building. He was about to simply go the way that led him further in when he heard two voices in the control room. He walked up to the door and decided to listen in on them before deciding whether or not to take them out. Maybe they could reveal a clue as to where the Clown was.

"Why do we have to stick around here guarding a stupid container? All it's doing is pumping something into the vents."

"What're you complaining about? We're getting paid in full, and all we have to do is sit here until she's dead. Best part is that long as we stay quiet, the Batman probably won't find us with the power out."

"Well what about that Zeus guy I heard about? What if he shows up?"

"You kidding? He's probably locked up in here himself. Hell, I'll bet the boss'll run into him in that Intensive place or whatever it's called."

"Alright alright. You sorta have a point... say where's this stuff being sent to anyway?"

Satisfied with now knowing which building to look through, Mercer prepared to smash the wall in when the next thing one of the goons said stopped him dead.

XXXXXX

Batman crept along silently the halls of Intensive Treatment. He had taken out at least twenty of the Joker's men, and one of them even told him that the Joker inside the building. For some reason, the Joker had demanded that the power be shut off on the entire island. This was a foolish choice; the Clown had given Batman a very distinct advantage. He slowly made his way to a hallway of nothing but cells, and heard an all too familiar voice.

"Mistah J! Ya came to get me, didn'tcha?"

"Haha! You could say that Harl." The Joker slowly reached into one of his pockets and grasped his trusty revolver. He got ready to pull the weapon out and rid himself of Harley forever, but he was struck in the side and then pinned to the wall by his neck. The impact had caused him a great deal of pain. He raggedly breathed and looked down slightly to see a familiar cowl. "Hello Batsy. Didn't think I'd see you here."

"You basically told me where you were going with that broadcast." Batman replied in his usual voice. "Why the sudden lust for the limelight?"

"Well I just got it!"

"What are you talking about?" Batman tightened his grip on his rival.

"Right now! You put all your thoughts on me, and came running!" He laughed painfully due to the iron hold on his neck. "You see, I decided to see how my old buddy Zsasz was doing, and he tells me that Zeus put himself in here! So I chose to put on a little show to catch his attention and to see how fast you would come to my rescue! I didn't have a doubt that you knew he was in this hellhole the whole time. And I knew you wouldn't let some spikey freak take your best friend away from you.

Batman had known this insane man for many years, and yet he still knew so little about him. He killed on pure impulse and by choice. He never thought about the safety of anyone, including his own. He didn't care how many people he killed to get what he wanted.

"Sometimes I just don't know why I let you live, Joker."

XXXXXX

"Poison Ivy's cell."

"Why are we pumping the boss's gas into her?"

"It ain't the gas, it's-" Before the thug could complete his answer, Mercer smashed through the wall and chopped both of them to pieces; one got the lower half of his body amputated and the other wound up with four silver talons coming down on the top of his head. Enough said. Mercer looked over to the side of the room and saw a large liquid container with a horrendous smiley face painted on it. On the top of it was a valve and a hose that was connected to one of the many pipes on the wall. His claws cut the hose like kite string.

He sprinted out of the hole he had created and made his way to Ivy. Mercer realized that with Joker in Batman's hands, Alex would have another day to get his claws on the psychotic clown.

"When I find you Joker, you're going to be my scratching post and punching bag for a long time."

XXXXXX

Ivy could barely breathe. The green mist that had now completely fill her cell wasn't Joker's signature Laughing Gas, but it was still deadly to her. She raggedly breathed as she held one hand on her stomach, and pressed the other hand on the glass wall of her cell to help keep her upright. Whatever the gas was, it made her feel like she was completely engulfed in a blue-hot fire.

One of Joker's thugs had stayed behind earlier, and he basked in watching her slowly die. He stood right up to the glass in front of Ivy. He had been taunting her for a while, although she clearly heard him, she had hardly paid any attention to his rambling; the only thing she had registered was that he claimed he going to 'have a lotta fun with her' after she died.

Ivy was just about to lose what little strength she had left and fall over when the thug suddenly stopped talking. She looked up and saw that three small swords were stuck in the glass, and they were coming out of his neck. The blades receded out of the glass and the goon, and the dead henchman fell to the ground to reveal Mercer with his clawed arms standing in front of her now. He took a few large steps to his left, and drove his clawed fist into the glass. It shattered into thousands of pieces. He stepped through the gaping hole he had just created and turned his arms back to normal. He ran over to her and picked her up bridal style. He turned on his heels and ran out of the green haze, which was making some of his biomass drip off of him.

"Don't die on me," he said to her as he ran through the large building making a beeline for the front door.

"Just don't drop me," she replied with a small smile. Over the course of her latest and his premiere incarceration inside Arkham, he had visited her custom cell everyday and the very first thing he said to her after calling her his winter rose was 'Are you alright?' After that, they slowly developed an actual relationship after admitting that they provoked each other to try and kill the other and realized that there were several similarities between them. She was well known and feared as an eco-terrorist, and Blackwatch had labeled him a bio-terrorist. Neither of them were human, and both were seen as monsters. Both of them had the ability to reinvent the world around them. They were both victims of what they had been researching when they were still just themselves.

Mercer was thankful that the rain had since stopped as he ran out of the building but soon skidded to a stop when an extremely strange black car pulled up in front of him. The door opened and Batman stepped out and looked at him and the barely conscious Ivy.

"We don't have time for you, Batman!" Mercer shouted in anger that he had lost all his momentum.

"It's not me who should be your concern," he replied calmly.

"That right goes to me." A voice to Mercer's left said. He turned to see a middle-aged woman surrounded by a small platoon of elite soldiers armed to the teeth. "Alexander J. Mercer. Codename Zeus."

"I'm not impressed miss. What else do you got?" Mercer shot at her. She was wasting his time; he could feel Ivy dying in his arms.

"Whoever dealt with you last time burned and erased everything else, but I know enough to know you're a force of nature and can be an extremely valuable asset, so you now work for me."

"Says who?" Mercer now wanted to tear her apart. Nobody owned him or told him what to do.

Before she could answer, Batman walked up next to Mercer and spoke up. "I know what you're up to Waller, and it's a very bad idea."

"Oh really? And just what do you know about him, Batman?"

"I know enough to guarantee that he'll kill all of you where you stand without a second thought if you keep wasting his time."

"Really?" She gestured to her soldiers and all of them aimed their primary weapons at Mercer.

"You don't want to do this Waller," Batman knowingly warned her.

"Listen to your Batman Waller, and I'll let you keep your head." Mercer added.

"Fire." Waller said. All the soldiers fired one shot into his head. They all stood completely still with their mouths agape as they watched him remained standing and alive.

He looked at them with fiery hatred not just because they had shot him, which he found to be very annoying, but they ran the risk of hitting Ivy. "Hold her." He said to Batman who took Ivy with tremendous care. He turned back to his new prey and formed his blade on his right arm and claws on the left.

XXXXXX

A/N: In the Arkham Asylum video game, it is clearly stated by Riddler that Joker can somehow make contact with the inmates while he is loose.


	5. Freedom And Forgiveness

A/N: I'm sorry for the delay of this update, but I can explain. The day after uploading the previous chapter, I decided to start my morning by messing around on my dirtbike, which is a bad idea in the first place due to my ADHD. My easily drifting mind distracted me from focussing on the terrain and well... you know. But I wasn't going very fast so I walked away (literally) with only a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder and sprained wrist, both on my left arm.

A/N 2: This chapter is dedicated to pyroinfurno for helping me remember a few of Mercer's tricks.

A/N 3: In the Hush series, it is shown that Arkham has a bail-out system when Harvey Dent gets the Joker released "on bail... pending on [his] trial."

A/N 4: Every time somebody says or writes 'relationship' people immediately assume it's a highly intimate one. What ever happened to 'very close friendship' or platonic?

XXXXXX

Mercer looked at his prey with immense fury. They had just tried to kill him but failed miserably; he had survived a nuclear blast, so how could mere bullets possibly do any actual damage? They needed to be taught a lesson about knowing who they fucked with.

"You're either completely stupid or incredibly arrogant if you actually think you can take on my men, and win," Waller said to him with a straight face.

"Now I know that you're ignorant about me." Mercer said with his scowl as he walked in a semi circle around them to get Ivy, and to a lesser extent Batman, out of their line of fire. "Bring it."

"Fire at will," she said in an indifferent voice. The soldiers again emptied several rounds into him. He felt them penetrating him, but he paid absolutely no mind; he was beyond and above pain. Whatever they did to him, he could do something at least fifty times worse with a flick of his wrist. He slowly walked towards them, showing that they weren't doing anything to stop him, or even slow him down. He felt the urge to use a Devastator, but he didn't want them to see what he was capable of doing... even if it was only the tip of the iceberg. He drove his claw into the ground, and a cluster of spikes shot out of the ground and impaled three of the soldiers. The rest of their squad began panicking, but Waller just moved to the sidelines and watched silently with a small scowl of her own. He jumped into the middle of the soldiers and began hacking and slashing wildly with his blade, taking out several more of his weak prey as more and more bullets blasted into him. He jumped out of the chaos and changed his blade into his whipfist in midair. He turned to face the remaining good-as-dead lower lifeforms who were now so frightened of him they struggled to aim accurately at him. He reared his whipfist back, and lashed it out in a wide arc in front of him. The weaponized limb sliced through them like water, effectively separating their lower bodies from their upper. With all the soldiers gone, he turned his attention to Waller, who still didn't show any indication that she felt threatened or was afraid of him. He walked up to her changing his whipfist to claws and towered over her.

"I am impressed Mercer," she told him. "But you just made a very bad enemy." She wasn't threatening at all, it was as if she was telling him an obvious fact.

"What a coincidence." He thrusted his right arm forward so that his silver talons were nanometers from her eyes. "So did you." His voice actual did sound threatening but Waller again didn't show any obvious reaction. The only reason he didn't consume her was that if he did, he would have to pose as her for a long time since she was obviously in the high ranks with some large party.

"You haven't seen the last of me Mercer," she promised.

"I know that, and I will be the last thing you ever see," he promised back lowering his claws. He turned back to where he had started when the fight was about to begin, and if he still had an actual heart, it would have skipped a beat. Batman, his car, and Ivy were gone.

He balled his clawed hands into fists. "Batman... you fucking..." He growled through gritted teeth.

XXXXXX

Ivy slowly came awake. She blinked her eyes a few times to make her vision less blurry. When she could fully see, she saw Batman standing over her, looking down with his brooding face with Jeremiah Arkham next to him, also looking down at her. She looked past them and saw that wherever they were, it was completely white. She felt a small amount of irritation on her right wrist and looked over to see that she was lying down in a hospital bed and was handcuffed to it; the cuffs were black and looked vaguely like bat wings.

"Where am I?" she asked the two men.

"In a sealed-off Clean room in Gotham General," Jeremiah answered. "We couldn't take you back to your containment chamber because the barrier was destroyed."

"I understand why you are here," she said pointing her free hand at Batman. She then turned her arm and pointed at Jeremiah. "But why are you here too? Are we going to have a session or something?"

"Actually, I'm here to tell you that you're released on bail," he said.

"What?" Ivy asked with disbelief. "But who...?"

"Oswald Cobblepot." Batman answered her silent question.

"Don't ask us why," Jeremiah added. "He walked into my office, wrote me a check, signed the forms, and it was done and done. You're free. At least until you come back to us." He said the last part knowingly. He then walked out of the solid and thick transparent door on the other side of the room, leaving Ivy alone with Batman.

"How long have I been here?" she asked.

"Two days," he said. "You know, this situation has more to it than it seems."

"Like what?" Ivy asked, her confusion growing.

"The fact that Penguin spent a portion of his money on something that's not beneficial to himself is strange enough." Batman started. "But what's really strange is that bailing you out was the first time anyone had seen him since the Iceberg Lounge disaster."

"Well maybe I just like the company of a fine woman, Batman," a new voice said from over at the door. Batman and Ivy turned to see Oswald Cobblepot walking over to them with an umbrella in his hand and a weird smile on his face. "After all, I basically locked myself away from the world for over two weeks."

"I've got my eyes on you two," Batman warned. He then began walking away towards the window.

"Batman, wait a second!" Cobblepot called out after him reaching his free out towards him. Batman stopped and turned to look at his longtime foe who then turned turned his outstretched arm over so that his open palm was facing the sky. He then grew his strange grin again. "Those cuffs on the dame look like they belong to you, so I trust that you have a key?"

Batman looked at him in silence for a moment and then walked over to Ivy. Out of nowhere, he produced a black key, and unlocked the cuffs, first on the bed's railing, and then around Ivy's arm. She rubbed her now free wrist with her other hand. Batman then noiselessly went to the window and jumped out of it. Penguin and Ivy heard his grappling gun discharge and he swung away into the young night.

Ivy then turned to Penguin with a demanding face. "Alright Cobblepot, I'm not you or any of your business partners, so why are you helping me?"

He let out a chuckle. "How could I let you stay in there when I cleanly got away?"

Ivy looked at him with irritated confusion, but her face became more shocked as black ooze seemed to seep out of Penguin's skin until it completely covered him and his clothes. He then began to change shape; he became thinner and taller. His tophat seemed to melt down until it had a rounded top. The ooze was then absorbed into the new person standing before her and smirking at her.

"Besides, it was pretty obvious you hated it in there," Alex said to her.

"You can look and sound exactly like anybody?" Ivy said with a small smile across her lips. She lifted herself out of the bed. She was still dressed the way she had been in Arkham.

"Well not everybody," Mercer admitted. "Just those I consume." They made they're way to the window Batman had left through earlier. Mercer picked up Ivy and jumped off the ledge. He continued holding onto her until they arrived at the Iceberg Lounge. The news of the massive shoot-out at the club still had a lot of people scared, so the 'owner' had it shut down until things cooled off and died down. The place was deserted so the two of them just walked through the front door.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Ivy asked curiously.

"Well, 'Cobblepot' wanted to have a change in his life, so he decided to travel the world and signed owner ship of the Lounge to Alex Mercer."

"I guess looking and sounding like someone else has several advantages." Ivy said. "What else can... consuming do for you?"

"I get all of their memories. So now all Penguin's money is now my money. Oh, and all his properties too." He looked around the very large room. "Let's get out of here. This place... I don't know what it is..."

XXXXXX

Batman was sitting in front of his supercomputer inside his Cave. He was deep in thought, trying to find a reason why Penguin would help someone who didn't work with him.

"Hey Bruce! I finally found something!" Nightwing called over to him on the other side of the large ledge they were on. Batman got out of his chair and walked over to his former ward who had one of his gloves off and was looking into a microscope. He lifted his head up and looked at his old mentor. "Look at this."

Batman looked into the scope and saw the black ooze. Nightwing then scraped off a small piece of his skin and placed it on the glass with the ooze. The slime instantly moved over to the skin sample and covered it. A second later, the ooze seemed to shrink and it changed its color until it was a perfect replica of the living tissue it had just consumed. A few seconds later, it reverted back to its dark self.

"Whatever Mercer is fighting with," Nightwing started as Batman lifted his head up and looked at him. "It can destroy any living thing it comes in contact with, and then perfectly imitate it at will."

"Perfect imitation..." Batman trailed off as he thought back to earlier when Penguin arrived at the hospital. He then realized that it wasn't Penguin at all.

"Where do you think he got this?" Nightwing asked putting his glove back on.

Batman then remembered what Oracle had told him about Mercer, about how he was a researcher for bio-weapons. "I think he played a part in creating it."

XXXXXX

Zsasz was sitting in his silent cell with all his restraints on him. Suddenly the door opens, and he raises his head to see a guard walking in and then closing the steel door behind him.

"Can I help you?" Zsasz asked in his naturally creepy voice.

"Your insanity case was thrown out," the guard said flatly. "You're now on death row."

"What?" Zsasz couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"I'm afraid so... Vic."

Zsasz then looked at the guard with confused interest. The only one had ever called him Vic was Zeus.

"And you're on the very top of the list," the guard said with a smirk. He suddenly turned completely black, changed shape, and the next thing Zsasz knew, Zeus was standing before him. "You're execution is right now."

XXXXXX

Eight seconds later, a guard came sprinting out of Zsasz's cell, screaming.

"Zsasz is loose! Victor Zsasz is loose!"

XXXXXX

Alex landed on the balcony outside the penthouse he had 'inherited' from Penguin and opened the bullet-proof glass doors. The instant he closed the door and stepped into the dark room, he knew something was wrong.

"Where's Ivy?" a voice in the dark said to him. He instantly recognized it.

"Out and about. Something I can do for you Batman?" He didn't see a point in lying to the Detective.

The Dark Knight stepped into the moonlight. "You can tell me what you did to Penguin and Zsasz."

"What makes you think I did anything?" He wasn't going to lie, but he also wasn't going to pass up a chance to play a little mind game with the World's Greatest Detective.

"Penguin disappears without a trace after Zeus attacks his club, and then weeks later he brings himself out of wherever he was and bails out the one person Alex Mercer actually showed no negative feelings towards during his stay in Arkham. Then he gives all his assets and property to Mercer as well before claiming that he plans to go on a soul search around the world. Victor Zsasz was Zeus' first attempted kill, and he knew who Zeus really was, and now he's apparently escaped from Arkham without anybody seeing him or getting hurt. That is not what happens with Zsasz."

Alex smirked at him and took the form of Penguin. "Maybe I just really like the young guy." He then changed himself into Zsasz. "I just randomly had a change of heart." Mercer turned back into himself. He could tell that even though Batman wasn't showing it, he was shocked by what he had just witnessed. "At least nobody will ever have to worry about either of them again."

Batman observed him silently for a moment. "You continue to surprise me at every turn Mercer."

"I've got more tricks than you've got toys."

"When will it be enough for you Alex?" Batman asked as he walked toward the balcony. "When will you finally be able to forgive yourself?" He fired his grappling gun and once again vanished into the night.


	6. See What I Have Seen

A/N: This story is most probably not canon with the timeline of the comics. I've read so many of them under so many different titles that I can no longer remember what happened when or who died or who became what etcetera etcetera...

A/N 2: To answer my good man pyromania101, I am using the Arkhamverse version of Ivy. (Arkhamverse is a term used to reference the Arkham video-games, i.e. Asylum and City.) In fact all the DCU characters in this story have their appearances from the Arkhamverse, with a few exceptions: Harley and Penguin have their New 52 looks, Joker looks as he does in Arkham Asylum (so basically he's not poisoned) and Bane looks as he does in Justice League: Doom.

Oh crap... I just gave all of you a spoiler, didn't I?

XXXXXX

"I know it's somewhat abrupt my darlings, but your new home is going to be so much more bigger and cleaner. And once Alex gets rid of that disgusting gigantic block of ice in the middle of it, you'll have a bountiful supply of water." Poison Ivy sitting on one of the enormous vines in the condemned warehouse she and Mercer had first... encountered one another talking to her self-grown plants, sensing that they were in pain after not being looked after whilst she was incarcerated inside Arkham.

"Still talking to nothing but your 'babies' I see," a playfully teasing voice said behind her. Ivy lifted her head up to see Catwoman smiling at her through her goggles.

"What do you want, Cat?" Ivy said with a hint of annoyance.

"I've heard through the grapevine..." She smirked at her intended pun. "That you've got an actual _man _in your life, and I just wanted to see if it were true." She looked around the large room. "Judging by the fact you and I are the only living things in here, I'm guessing they were just telling stories."

"You know that you and I are _not _the only living things in here! And secondly..." She trailed off and froze. She didn't know how to respond to the part about her and Mercer because she didn't know exactly what type of relationship theirs was. She could tell that he had feelings towards her since he had chosen saving her over killing the Joker even when he knew exactly where to find the Harlequin of Havoc; she just didn't know how strong those feelings were. He wasn't human at all, and she wasn't far behind, but he was still essentially a person. She definitely knew that she was attracted to him, but she hadn't yet told him, mostly because she had never gotten him to stand still long enough to talk about it; he was too busy going about his business and agenda and posing as the Penguin signing over Cobblepot's bussinesses, properties, and bank accounts to Alex Mercer. After all that was said and done and Alex was a very wealthy and powerful man, Mercer boarded a plane in the guise of Penguin to Asia, and then flew back to Gotham the next day disguised as a random drug addict nobody would miss he had run into in The Far East.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," Ivy finally said in regards to Catwoman's assumption of her being with Alex. "What's it to you anyway?"

"Just curious is all." Catwoman said with a small smile.

"You know what curiosity does to cats," Ivy stated.

"Nine lives Ivy. Nine lives." Catwoman did a few backflips out of the wide door and was soon out of Ivy's sight.

XXXXXX

On the other side of the world Rā's Al Ghūl was sitting in one of his many lairs observing two pictures of Alexander J. Mercer, one from Manhattan and the other from his stay in Arkham Asylum. Unlike Batman and Cadmus, Rā's had far more connections in everything, but even his influence and sources could only gather pieces of information on Blacklight and project ZEUS, but he had more than both of them combined. Blackwatch had gone to a lot of trouble to try and keep the breakout very esoteric.

"This Mercer person... he seems to be beyond life and death itself..." He murmurered to his daughter Talia, who could tell he had an interest in Mercer.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"We are going to wait and try to find out more about him. And then, perhaps we should go and get a sample... a very _big _sample of him..."

XXXXXX

"What is it Dad?" Damian asked as he ran into the Cave. Alfred had just told him that his father wished to speak to him immediately.

"The police have found a lead on where they might be able to find Killer Croc." His father answered as he put on his cowl, completing his Batsuit.

"Okay, so you're going out to help them. So what, you wanted to let me know it's just me, Tim and Alfred who'll be eating dinner?"

"Not quite on either of those. It's just Tim and Alfred staying tonight."

Damian instantly knew what he was saying and got into his Robin costume and slipped on the huge light-grey hood and cape. "So how was I off on the first part?"

"The main reason we are going isn't to go after Croc, but to try to find and tail Mercer, because I can guarantee that he will try to get to Croc first."

"You mean... I get to finally help you with Zeus?" Damian asked excitedly. Ever since they had first heard of Zeus, Bruce had refused to even let him accompany him on patrol in the fear of them running into the murderous redeemer.

Damian didn't know why, but the main reason his father had made him stay in the manor was because Bruce knew that Damian would begin attacking Mercer on assassin instinct and slight impulse. If he did that, he would undoubtedly make Zeus incredibly aggravated and would be attacked by the hooded predator. Even though he had been raised to be a killer since birth, Bruce knew that his son stood no chance of winning a straight up fight against Mercer. But tonight, Batman finally decided to allow Damian to accompany him on a search for Mercer on one condiction...

"Do NOT attack Mercer at all," Bruce said to his ward as they sped along in the Batmobile.

"Why not?" Damian asked quizzically. "Aren't we trying to stop him?"

"Yes, but not right now."

"Why not?" Damian was now legitemently confused.

"Because we don't know nearly enough about him or his weakness... if he even as one. And I have a feeling that even though he took out Zsasz and Penguin, gained all of the Cobblepots' fortune, and singlehandedly fended of Waller and Cadmus, he hasn't even _begun_ to show Gotham what he can do..."

XXXXXX

Commissioner James Gordon was riding in a police helicopter headed towards Killer Croc's possible lair. The helicopter descended and landed in the middle of a closed off street not far from five empty armored trucks and about thirty police officers including a SWAT team.

Gordon climbed out of the chopper, leaving the pilot alone in the aircraft, and began to address and brief his strike force.

"Now listen up! We've got reason to believe that Killer Croc is somewhere in the area with a new homefront somewhere under the ground. We're going to try and find him and bring him in. If he attacks, you all have shoot-to-kill permission. If we run into Batman, don't delay him in assisting us, we need all the help we can get. Now let's go find that animal!"

The pilot inside the chopper watched all the men go down into the sewer system.

"You should have warned them about running into me if I find him first," the pilot said as he turned completely black. A second later Alex Mercer looked like himself again. He was about to climb out of the helicopter, but he reached back into it and grabbed a shotgun to take with him. He wasn't above using weapons that weren't a part of him since they got the job done, plus Croc was just an animal, so basically Alex was going on a hunting trip so a gun seemed appropriate. He climbed out of the chopper, walked over to a manhole cover, and stomped on it, sending it down into the sewer system in pieces. He cracked his neck a few times and jumped down into Croc's domain.

XXXXXX

He was casually walking along a narrow walkway next to an underground river. In his right hand was the high-caliber shotgun and his claws were on his left arm. He didn't bother trying to be quiet like he knew Gordon and his men were somewhere else in the subterranean maze. Why should he? He didn't care if he wound up surprising Croc or if Croc was the one who capitalized on the element of surprise; either way the Apex Predator was going to kill the crocodile, but had decided not consume him.

"Why would I ever have to go around looking like a gigantic green freak?" Mercer had asked himself.

He continued walking down the dimly lit tunnel. The only sounds he could hear were the echos of the occasional drop of water falling onto the concrete walkway or the now still water and the almost metallic clangs of his claws when he pressed them together and then fanned them out. He flexed his weaponized fingers for an actual reason, and it was because he wanted to make the noise they created echo through the tunnels and draw Croc's attention to him. He was drawing his prey right to him.

Suddenly, a faint growl sounded from behind him. Instantly, Mercer turned his hips and shoulders so that his gun was pointing right behind him, but he found nothing.

"Hmm, I guess my ears are playing tricks on me," he said to himself rather loudly, hoping that Croc would hear his words and the alligator wrestler would come to his own demise. He continued on, clanging his talons together. After about five minutes of nothing, he heard a swishing sound in the resting water. He stopped for a moment, and then turned and walked over to the edge of the walkway. He leaned forward and looked into the water. It was very dark and the dim lighting didn't help. Even though he could see nothing, he had an uneasy feeling and aimed his shotgun at the water. As he prepared to pull the trigger, something huge sprang out of the water. Mercer jumped back a few yards and saw an extremely tall and muscular... something. It had scaly green skin, teeth like knives, and yellow reptilian eyes. Mercer raised his gun and let off a round into the thing that was obviously Killer Croc's stomach. Croc didn't even stumble or look down to observe his wound, not that it mattered since the shot hadn't even pierced his scaled hide.

"The scent on you is... different," Croc said to Mercer in a very frightening and raspy voice. In response Mercer fired off another round into him, mostly because he wanted to make the freak angry enough to attack him. "You don't learn, do you?" Croc let out a roar and charged. Mercer waited for his prey to get close, and then he jumped over Croc's right shoulder. As he passed over Croc, he brought up the hand with the gun up to his chest, and then he swung it backwards onto Croc's skull. Mercer couldn't tell if he had done any actual damage to Croc, but he had hit his prey so hard the gun shattered into pieces. As he landed, he changed his arms into his musclemass ability, knowing that using claws or the blade would take a while to get into the animal's skin, and the hammerfist would cause the roof of the tunnels to collapse around a good portion of the area. He turned around and waited until Croc got close to him again, and then gave Croc a bone-shattering punch on his chest. The huge man went flying over the river and landed in the wall across it. He slid out of the indent his body had made and collapsed onto the other walkway across the water from Mercer. Alex changed one arm into claws and the other into the whipfist, planning to grasp Croc with the whip and then make him come flying over to Mercer's claws.

After Mercer reared his whipfist back and prepared to launch it at Croc, something suddenly embedded itself into his right shoulder. He put his whipfist down and looked over to see a black shard of metal inside him. He plucked it out of him to look at it, and saw that it was crudely shaped like a bat. It didn't take a genius to figure out who thrown it at him.

"Hello once again... Batman." He turned his entire body to look at the Dark Knight with a young teenage boy wearing a very big grey hood with a cape on it standing next to him. "Who's the kid?"

"Robin." the boy answered as he pulled out a few throwing weapons of his own.

"You know Batman, it'll take more than a piece of metal to stop me," Mercer said as he began to twirl the projectile between his claws.

"I'm not trying to stop you. Only distract you."

"Distract me from what?"

Batman responded by pointing at the spot where Croc had landed. Mercer looked over and saw that his prey was gone; he must have slid back into the water and swam off. Mercer didn't really care though since Croc was just a brainless animal and it wouldn't take Alex all that long to find him again. He turned his head back to the duo to find that they hadn't moved.

"Job well done Batman. This round goes to you," Mercer said to him.

"But it's not quite over yet Mercer." He moved his hand and pressed one of the many buttons on his utility belt. Mercer looked at him quizzically and then heard a beeping sound coming from his left hand. Confused, he brought the claw up to his face and saw a red light go on and off with the rhythm of the beeping, which was rapidly increasing its pace.

"Nice job again Batman." Mercer said without looking away from the weapon as he realized what it was about to do. Seconds later the tunnels were filled with an almost deafening blast and Mercer was thrown back a fair distance onto his back. He picked himself up and saw that Batman and Robin were gone. "Why must he incessantly delay me? If he saw what I've seen..."

XXXXXX

Inside Arkham Asylum, a maintenance work was putting the finishing touches on Poison Ivy custom cell by welding a new intercom onto the glass. After sealing it on, he knelt down to put down his welding torch, and noticed a strange black slime half as big as a dime on one of his pant legs. Curiosity took over and he touched his pointer finger onto the ooze and then brought it up to his eyes to get a good and close look at it. After observing it for not even a second, the black ooze seemed to be absorbed into his skin. He then broke out into a small fit of rough coughs. He had no idea what had just happened, but he had seen far more stranger things inside of Arkham so he shrugged it off. He gathered up his tools and left the cell. As he made his way for the door, a guard he was friends with stopped him. They had a short chit-chat, and then shook hands as they bid each other a safe night. Seconds later the guard coughed violently a few times, and looked at his palm to see a few black droplets disappear into his skin.


	7. Blacklight Versus Venom

Roman Sionis, better known as the crime lord Black Mask, was sitting alone in his office with a man he had called in to take care of a certain problem.

"This Zeus freak is the reason I called you hear today," Roman said.

"It's not the Batman for once? I am honestly surprised. But what is so bad about this... Zeus?"

"He took out the Penguin and thirty of his men after kicking down his front door. And he did it with his bare hands!"

"He sounds impressive."

"Impressive?! Have you lost your mind? He's dangerous to me and my profits! If he went after Penguin, how long before he comes after me?!"

"What makes you think he will even try to kill you?"

"Easy, he's just like everybody else out there, he wants money and power. And since he's already got Penguin, the only way he can go any higher is ME!"

"How do you know he has taken out the Penguin?"

"The midget decides to go on a long trip and give away all his connections? That's not him at all! Zeus must have like a robot or something in Penguin's place, because the real Penguin would sooner kill a guy than give him a single cent!"

"I see your point Black Mask."

"Good. So will you take him out?"

"That depends. What's in this for me?"

"Four million up front. Seven million when he's good and dead."

Roman's hired muscle thought for a moment before answering. "Alright. I shall break this god for you just as I broke the Bat."

The two of them shook on it. "Pleasure doing business with you Bane. But how exactly do you plan on finding him?"

"Oh I have an excellent idea..."

XXXXXX

Jeremiah was sitting in his office almost sick with worry. Over the past week, nearly half of the workers in the asylum had began coughing roughly every five seconds. Clearly something was going around, and it was spreading like wildfire.

"You need to keep everyone who's sick away from everyone else." Jeremiah spun around and saw Batman had appeared in his office.

"It never startles me when you do that," Jeremiah replied catching his breath. "But why?"

Batman handed him a vial filled with black liquid. "That is why."

"What on Earth is this?" Jeremiah asked as he closely looked at the vial.

"It's a piece of the weapons Zeus uses. I know because it is identical to a sample of him I found elsewhere. I found this spread out in Specific Treatment."

"Okay." Jeremiah looked back over to Batman. "But why is it a problem?"

"I ran some tests on my own sample. It's capable of absorbing living flesh and perfectly imitating it. From what your workers have told me and from what I've gathered on Zeus on my own, it's a biological weapon, most likely a manmade virus, and is highly contagious."

"Oh dear." He looked back at the sample and then back to Batman. "But why doesn't it affect Zeus if he's constantly surrounded by it?"

"Zeus isn't human. He had his throat torn completely open by Zsasz, and then he made Zsasz soar into a wall."

"That's... both disturbing and amazing. But what exactly does this stuff do?"

"Aside from the imitation, I'm not sure. It could kill the host, it could simply lie dormant. It might even make those who have it similar to Zeus."

Jeremiah pictured the Joker with the spiked arms Zeus always had, and that alone was enough to convince him to do what Batman had said when he first arrived.

XXXXXX

President Lex Luthor was in the Oval Office with Cadmus' Amanda Waller. She had just told him several reasons for a very random and somewhat pointless plan.

"Quarantine all of Gotham..." He repeated her plan back to her.

"Yes Mr. President. That is my proposition."

"I would like to know why we should exactly."

"My men and I have evidence that Gotham is the sight of an incredibly contagious and deadly virus." She pulled out a small vial full of the ooze her men had managed to blow off of Mercer in front of Arkham. She handed it to Lex. "It has no cure. It's most likely airborne. So there is only one way to contain it..."

XXXXXX

It had taken Mercer a lot of time, searching, and work, but he had finally found a crook who knew where to find Black Mask. He stood in front a desecrated and abandoned warehouse near the Gotham shipyard in the dead of night. He had expected to find Black Mask in a more high quality place, but then again, that would have been rather predictable. He got his claws at the ready, and charged into the building straight through one of the rotten walls. He looked rapidly around, expecting hundreds of men armed to the teeth to surround their boss and kill the man who intended to murder him. Instead he found the entire place to be empty. He couldn't understand since the man who told him that Black Mask was here had done so by being consumed. It was then that he heard slow clapping from inside the warehouse. Slowly, a very big and muscular man walked out of the heavy shadows. He was wearing a white and black mask and had a tube running from his left wrist to the back of his head.

"Well done Zeus. I did not expect you to find me this quickly."

"So you are the infamous Black Mask." Mercer responded fanning out his claws. "I'd have expected a little more security. Or any security at all."

The man let out a laugh. "You have the wrong man Zeus. I am not the crime lord, but his muscle. You may call me Bane. And I don't need help to tear you to pieces. I also devised the ploy that would lead you here, but I must admit that it was a rather simple one. You see, while the majority of my plans are precise and complex, the one that led you here was... pathetic. All we did was lie to all the underlings about moving Mask's HQ to here."

"You're right. That's a very pathetic plot." He quickly kneeled down, scraped his claws along the ground, and brought himself back up into a fighting stance.

The man smiled and cracked his hands and wrists. "No man can defeat Bane. You should reconsider what you plan to do with those before I rip them right out of you."

"Well Bane, I can now see that you ran into this blind." He changed his arms back to normal. He decided to have some fun toying with this hitman before consuming him. "Enjoy your last moments."

Bane charged at him. Zeus waited until he was about to land a punch on him, and then he easily sidestepped out of the way and elbowed Bane right on his back. Even though Zeus had only used a fraction of his power, it still sent Bane crashing through the wall and out into the street. Zeus climbed out of the hole he had just made and saw Bane picking himself up. Zeus looked to his side and saw an empty car which he walked over to. He dug his fingers into the front end and tossed it right towards Bane, who just managed to get himself into a standing position before the vehicle rammed into him. After colliding with Bane, the car lost almost no momentum and only stopped after Bane wound up sandwiched between it and the side of another building. For a few seconds the car remained in the air before finally falling off of Bane, who had made a huge imprint of his body on the wall and was stuck in it. After groaning for a moment Bane pushed himself out of the wall and looked at Zeus with fury in his eyes. He let out a war cry as he once again charged at Zeus, who once again waited for him to get close, and once he did he caught Bane's assaulting fist in his hand and then kicked Bane away from him, sending him right through the wall this time.

"You just signed your death warrant Zeus!" Bane roared as he climbed out of the hole, glaring at Zeus, ready to commit mass murder.

"I'll be sure to put that on your headstone." Zeus replied dryly. He watched as Bane apparently adjusted something on his left arm just below the spot where the tube started. In the next few seconds, Bane let out a loud groan as he grew to be almost twice his size.

"Now the real game begins." Bane said with a smile on his masked face as he pounded his knuckles together.

Zeus then noticed the whirring sound above him. He looked up and saw a helicopter hovering above the two of them. "How about a round of catch?"

XXXXXX

Batman was once again going in any random direction as he raced around town looking for Mercer before he went on a full blown rampage when Oracle messaged him.

"Batman, I know where Zeus is. And you won't believe who he's with."

"Where?"

"Listen to this."

She remotely adjusted the signal and Batman was now looking at one of Gotham's many news broadcasts one the small screen just below the dashboard.

"For those who are just joining us, we are currently above what appears to be a death match between the terrorist Bane and Gotham's vigilante known as Zeus. We cannot tell who is winning, but we are hoping that Zeus doesn't fall in this fight to the death."

Keeping one eye on the road, Batman began tracing the signal and watched as the camera show Bane charge at Zeus, who simply stopped and then viciously kicked Bane through a building. Bane climbed out and activated his Venom. Zeus looked up directly at the helicopter.

The reporter again began to speak. "It seems Bane has just made himself even more powerful than before. I only hope that Zeus doesn't get every bone in his body broken..." He was cut off when the helicopter suddenly thrashed around for a moment as if violent winds from multiple directions rammed into it simultaneously. The chopper then began hurtling towards the ground.

XXXXXX

Zeus shot his whipfist into the bottom of the chopper above him and thrusted his arm down, making the chopper almost went into freefall towards Bane. The Venom-high strongman caught the helicopter in his arms and the impact made his feet slide back on the street several feet. When he came to a stop Bane tossed aside the chopper and made his way towards the man he would either kill or be killed by, and he didn't plan on dying that night.

"That's the best you can do Zeus? It looks like your all out of tricks." He had a mad smile on his face as he cracked his knuckles.

"'The best'? Ha! I've not even scratched the surface." Zeus bent his neck to the sides, cracking it multiple times. He was actually having a little bit of fun with this sturdy, resilient, and almost dangerous freak. He changed his whipfist back into his normal arm.

"Well then, let's start scratching."

Even though he was huge now, Bane ran towards Zeus with impressive speed. He swung his arms downwards in an attempt to crush Zeus into the ground. Zeus again sidestepped his foe's attack and forcefully slammed his fists together. The impact created a shockwave and sent Bane back several yards. Zeus looked down and saw that he had made a small crater with the shockwave as well. He then ran over to Bane with his own incredible speed and jumped into a flying kick, which landed right on Bane's side. Again Bane flew back and Zeus landed gracefully upright.

"You know Bane, normally when I fight people like you, they've been dead for ten minutes by now. But since I spent almost a week chasing a ghost thanks to you, I'm going to enjoy myself and beat your fucking brains in."

XXXXXX

Batman watched as the helicopter free fell, but was caught by Bane, who then tossed aside the chopper to resume his brawl with Zeus. He was then notified that the signal was triangulated.

"Oracle, I'm headed over to stop them before they level half the city."

"What?" She had blatant concern and worry in her voice. "Are you sure you should do it alone? You remember what Bane did to you. And we have no idea how Zeus can get if his adrenaline takes over. Batman... I really don't think you should get involved on this. Zeus might turn his attacks onto you!"

"That's a risk I'm going to take. I won't just stand by while the two of them try to crush each other and take out hundreds of people with them."

Oracle let out a defeated sigh. "Alright, but you will please at least let one of them help you? Maybe Nightwing can rendevous."

"Fine. Bane and Zeus are at the eastern shipyards."

XXXXXX

Zeus continued to toy with Bane. Every time his opponent would try to attack him, Zeus would either dodge or counter it. Bane had yet to manage to hit him once. Bane thrusted a fist forward Zeus caught it in his open hand. After getting a firm grip, Zeus lifted Bane into the air and slammed him into the ground. He repeated this a few times before deciding that he had had his fill of amusement. He threw Bane as hard as he could over the buildings and leapt after him. After soaring in the air for a few seconds, they began to fall. Bane landed first. He struggled to pick himself up. He didn't even manage to look up before Zeus landed on his back upright. The impact of Zeus landing on him with such force instantly created a small crater around them in the road they were in.

"Thank you Bane. You were... amusing." Zeus brought up his left leg, and brought his foot down hard on Bane's neck. Zeus consumed the hired muscle. After Bane was completely gone, Zeus felt even stronger than before due to Bane having Venom coursing through him when he was consumed. Zeus cracked his neck a few times before walking off.

After ten minutes of making his way back to his base, Mercer saw a familiar car screech to a halt in front of him and watched a familiar man jump out of it.

"What happened to Bane?" Batman asked in a leveled voice.

Mercer smirked at him and took the form of his most recent meal. "You missed quite the show Batman." He changed back into himself.

"You killed Bane." Batman stated. His voice had just the slightest hint of shock.

"You really are a detective. I would say that I'm sorry that you didn't arrive in time to stop me, but I've never been much of a liar."


	8. On Our Own

It had been six hours since Mercer had somehow managed to singlehandedly defeat Bane, and Bruce Wayne was pacing all around his mansion thinking about what Mercer would do next. Or who he was going after next. Aside from his incessant footsteps echoing through the halls, the huge manor was almost completely quiet. Tim and Dick were sparring down in the Cave, Alfred almost never made any noise anyway, and Damian was lying down watching several news channels that were rerunning Zeus and Bane's brawl; he liked seeing Zeus throw the man who had once crippled his father around like a feathery ragdoll.

"There doesn't seem to be any pattern at all," he said to himself as he continued walking. "He just takes out whoever he runs into or can find. And anybody who's unfortunate enough to be around when he's in battle is at risk of getting killed in the process."

"Still loudly thinking about today's headline Sir?" Alfred asked appearing out of nowhere. He had a silver tray with a hot cup of tea and a newspaper.

"Headline?" Bruce grabbed the newspaper and sure enough, the first thing to be read was written in huge bold letters.

'**ZEUS BESTS BANE**'

The main picture was a captured image of the live broadcast that had filmed a portion of the death match. It showed Bane soaring across the street right after Zeus had kicked him away. After staring at the title and the picture for a few long seconds Bruce began reading the actual article.

"... Unfortunately, no other witnesses were around when their fight came to its conclusion, and Zeus left the scene before anyone could even spot him. Authorities are still searching for Bane, unsure if he is alive or dead since no body has yet to be found."

"Well perhaps you should tell them that they shall never find a single trace of the strongman, Sir." Alfred suggested.

Bruce took the cup of tea off the tray before answering. "I am. The only way Mercer could have taken the appearance of Bane would be if he absorbed him."

"Sir, I cannot help but wonder if Mr. Mercer gains more than just the ability to perfectly imitate his victims?"

Just as Bruce was about to answer, a chime rang through the mansion indicating that someone was waiting at the front door.

"I suppose my question can wait for its answer master Bruce." Alfred set down the tray on one of the many small tables around the house as he made his way across the huge house and to the door and whoever was on the other side. He approached the door.

"Welcome to Wayne Manor," he said as he opened the enormous door and then saw who was standing there. "I don't have any idea why you would want to be here Mr. Zeus."

"Don't play games. I know you know who I am," he replied. "And let me promise up front that I give my word that I am not here to start a fight."

"And just why would I believe you... Mr. Mercer?"

"Because none of you are on my list and I'm trying to make this place better than it is right now."

Alfred looked at Mercer up and down. "Very well."

XXXXXX

Bruce was now sitting down with his son as they kept rewatching the fight over and over again.

"A visitor, Master Bruce," Alfred's voice called out. The two Waynes looked over to the door as Alfred entered with...

"Zeus?" Bruce asked in confusion. He couldn't figure out why Mercer was at his home. He stood up and walked in front of the killer.

"I prefer my real name from those who know it. Call me Mercer."

"Alright... Mercer. Why are you here?"

"We all have our reasons and our secrets... don't we..." He then had a mischievous and smug grin. "**Batman**?"

Bruce stared at him for a few precious seconds. He considered playing dumb, or even lying to the lethal vigilante, but he knew it was pointless; Mercer was almost impossible to deceive. "Did you beat that information out of Bane?"

"Not exactly. He simply gave it to me after I consumed him."

"Consumed?" Damian asked in confusion.

"You know, when there isn't a body left."

"So you call it consuming," Bruce said. "But that doesn't explain how you know so much."

"So even the World's Greatest Detective doesn't know everything about me. Whenever something is consumed by me, not only do I take their appearance, but I also take their memories, their abilities, and I grow stronger."

"Well that explains several things, but not why you are here."

"Let me say that blackmail isn't my thing and I have zero intentions of killing you. I merely want you to know that I know."

Before any response could be given, their attention was grabbed by the television going static and then clearing up to reveal a very well known and disliked face.

"Hello Gotham City, this is President Lex Luthor speaking. I'm very sorry to say that I have rather grim news. Evidence has been brought before me that says that a virus is loose in Gotham City, a very contagious virus. To get to the point, I have gone over it with Congress, and it was a unanimous decision to quarantine Gotham to prevent the spread of this unknown virus. Do not be alarmed. The government will provide the city with food and supplies, but none of you are allowed to leave and nobody else is allowed to enter unless they plan to stay for the duration of the quarantine. Also, we are currently looking for a cure for the virus that is loose in your city. The only current known symptom is frequent coughing that results in blood spewing from the mouth. Do not panic or worry, we are doing all we can for you and your city. Try to survive."

The screen went static again for a moment and then returned to the news channel which was now screaming about the quarantine.

"Virus?" Bruce asked himself. Mercer then figured out who really put Gotham into a quarantine.

"Waller," he growled the name as he formed his claws on his arms and tightened his hands into fists. He then felt a hand carefully place itself to avoid the spikes on his right shoulder. He looked over to see Bruce looking right back at him with a completely serious look.

"You've been through this before," he stated. "How did you stop it?"

"That would take forever to explain, so why don't we do it somewhere else..."

XXXXXX

The sun had just set and Batman, Nightwing, Robin and Damian were all arriving where Batman and Mercer had agreed to meet. On their way to it, they had passed a bridge and saw that it was heavily guarded by a military blockade.

"So you all made it," Alex said as he walked out of the heavy shadows and into their sight. "So what exactly do you want to know Batman?"

"Is there a cure?" Batman wasted no time.

"No?" Mercer answered flatly.

"How do you catch it?"

"Basically just don't come in contact at all with anyone who already has it. Don't touch them, don't touch anything they did, don't even breathe the same air as them."

"Is there anyway we can help those who are already sick?" Nightwing asked with dread and concern.

"Yes. Kill them. Otherwise they'll become walking corpses that live only to spread it as much as they can."

"You know fully well that we never kill," Robin said.

"Alright then. Just don't get near any of them unless you feel like eventually becoming a mindless zombie."

"Is this going to get any worse?" Batman demanded.

"If it goes like it did in Manhattan, yes... a lot worse. But don't panic."

A loud explosion prevented him from talking any further. The whole group looked over and saw that bridge not too far away had been blown to smithereens.

"Looks like he meant it when he said nobody can leave or get in," Damian said. He then turned back to Mercer. "So now can we panic?"

"You think this is bad?" He turned around and started walking. "You haven't seen _anything_ yet. The panicking comes later."

Batman pressed two fingers on the side of his cowl and activated the com-link to Oracle.

"Oracle, how many other bridges have been destroyed?"

"All of them Batman. They've also shut down the airports and all the boating companies. They really don't want anything to get in or out. Did you manage to get any information out of Zeus?"

"Yes. Basically to survive, we just don't get near anyone who's sick."

"Batman... do you think this is going to just like last time Gotham was... cut off?"

"Perhaps in some ways, but at least we're not entirely on our own this time."

XXXXXX

Jeremiah Arkham looked out of the window in his office, thinking about last time something like this happened. He then chose to do exactly what he did last time. He was going to shut down the asylum and let all the inmates run wild.

XXXXXX

"Ivy?" Alex called out as he entered their safe haven, the former Iceberg Lounge. Since they had gained the club, Ivy had redecorated the inside of it so that it was like the old warehouse where they first met; plants covered the walls and most of the floor.

"Alex, you're back!" She came out of nowhere and put her arms around him. He felt a bit awkward about the embrace, and he was also a little creeped out by how she blended in with all the vegetation. "I heard the explosions. What happened?"

"They destroyed all the bridges. The city is now a quarantine. We're stuck here... and we're on our own."


	9. Arc Two: Isolation

A/N: I would like to give millions of thanks to Tibbles. It's been at least a year since I've even touched my copy of Prototype, and I have since forgotten some of the plot points, so I am in your dept for reminding me of who really made all the freaks in the quarantine.

Also, why does everybody either adore or hate Prototype 2? I've yet to play the entire thing. In fact the only part I have played is the final battle against Mercer.

XXXXXX

It had been nearly a week since Gotham had been cut off from the world. There was no way of getting off the island city, not with the bridges destroyed, all the airports had been shut down, and the only boats anywhere were the military battleships that were constantly patrolling the waters surrounding the city, ready to blow away anyone who tried to either swim across to the mainland or by boating across in a homemade raft; anyone who tried to escape were shot on sight without hesitation or warning.

Luthor hadn't been lying when he said that the city would receive supplies and food; everyday cargo planes would fly over the city and drop parachuted crates to the awaiting ground. It was mostly food and refreshments, but at times the crates would contain pleasurable things like books and cigarettes or even toys for the children. It didn't take long for the gangs to try and take all the supply drops and attempt to sell the items for an incredibly irrational price. Some of them were put out of business by the Bat Family, and others were very unfortunate to be shut down by Zeus, but their numbers were still vast and all still stole the crates for their own profit.

XXXXXX

"Attention everyone within Arkham Asylum," Jeremiah's voice echoed through the PA system throughout the island. "It has come to my attention that a portion of the virus that has put Gotham into the quarantine is present on the island, so to avoid running the risk of putting all of you in mortal danger, and since none of you inmates are going anywhere anyways, I have decided to shut down Arkham Asylum until further notice."

Joker couldn't believe what he had just heard. "If he's serious... he deserves to be in this cell more than I do!" He laughed loudly and it echoed through the halls. His cackles stopped as he heard a buzzer and his cell door opened. He looked at it quizzically, and a very wide smile covered his face. He stood up and walked out of his confinement space. "Clown about town! AHAHAHAHA!"

"Wait for me Mistah J!" Harley playfully shouted as she ran up to him and took his hand. He didn't mind, today was one of the days he liked her.

XXXXXX

Jeremiah watched from the safety of his office as all the unstable mentals Batman and the police had rounded up over time walked out of the front door. The super-villains were the only ones left since they all took the time to go and retrieve their things and getups. Joker was wearing his suit and his laughter could easily be heard. On his arm was Harley in her very revealing outfit. Scarecrow now looked like his namesake, and Jeremiah guessed that the only remotely normal looking inmate was really Clayface disguising himself to avoid unwanted attention. Riddler casually walked next to Joker on the opposite side of Harley talking about nothing but sheer maniacal nonsense wearing his green sports coat purple tie, tinted glasses, and fingerless gloves, green bowler hat, and was holding his question mark cane twirling it around his fingers.

None of them knew it but the real reason Jeremiah had let them out was because all the employees who had become sick... had died. Every single one of them. So the possibly crazy Jeremiah let everyone off the island to run rampant because he thought that if everyone on the island and in the asylum died from the same virus, people would believe that he was the one who had released it in an attempt to get rid of all of Gotham's insane killers but his plan had gotten out of hand, and the only one to blame for the quarantine, and the hell they were now in, would be him.

XXXXXX

Two-Face was standing over a starving woman who was begging him to give her a piece of the food his men had taken right after the crate had landed. With the Penguin apparently on the other side of the world, the competition for getting a rather illicit profit was, at the moment, mostly between Two-Face and Black Mask. She was so thin her ribs were clearly visible, and her clothes looked like they hadn't been washed in a year.

He gave a response to her pleas by pulling out his signature coin and held it out in front of her face so that she was looking at the unmarked side. "I give you a warm meal." He turned it around so that she could see the 'bad' side. "My men break your legs."

Before she could even respond he flipped it high into the air. He caught it in his right palm, which he then slapped onto the back of his left hand. He slowly lifted his right hand to reveal the outcome.

"Enjoy your dinner miss."

XXXXXX

Mercer stood on a very high rooftop looking at the city. Despite being put in complete isolation, Gotham didn't seem to be showing any major signs or incidents like Manhattan had. He hadn't found a single Hive, Evolved, or even a walking corpse. The only sign of the virus he saw was a high bodycount. That told him that Waller hadn't yet gotten her slimy hands on Redlight yet, or was just waiting for the right moment to unleash it.

"Alex Mercer," a voice from behind him said. He slowly turned his body around to see a woman standing not ten feet from him. He couldn't figure out how she had gotten there without him noticing. Everything she was wearing was black, and some of the material covered the lower half of her face. Her dark hair was tied back into one long braid What caught his attention was the sword in her hand.

"Who wants to know?" he asked forming his claws on both arms. One sword wouldn't last long against eight indestructible talons.

"I bring a message from the great Rā's Al Ghūl, leader of the League of Assassins. You have the power and potential to change the world for the greater good, and he wants to meet with you face to face."

He didn't see any harm in that. "Where can I find him?"

"_He_ will find _you_." She put the sword back into the scabbard on her back, and disappeared over the ledge of the roof. He walked over to where she fell and looked over the edge to find that she was already gone.


	10. Two Immortals

A/N: this chapter was cowritten with my good friend phen0m20

**XXXXXX**

It was a starless night. The moon was not quiet full, but it was still very bright and pale. Mercer was slowly walking down a completely empty street in the dead of the evening, no where to go and with the inability to stand still for some reason he couldn't understand. He thought about how he and Batman both knew who the other really was, and how neither of them would ever tell anybody. His mind slowly veiled over him and made him become entirely oblivious to the world around him, but he was suddenly pulled back into reality when he heard a thud behind him. He instantly stopped walking and turned around. He saw a supply crate that had literally just landed; the parachute was still falling to the ground. He looked at the crate for a long moment and then up and down the street. He found that he was the only "living" thing around. At that moment, he decided to stand guard by the supplies until someone deserving came around to collect things vital to their survival. He knew that if he simply turned on his heels and walked off, one of the gangs would get their slimy hands on it and charge for a profit. He walked over and leaned his back onto the wooden box that was almost as tall as he was and just waited.

After five minutes of dead silence, he heard a small approaching the crate on the opposite side he was on. Their conversation made it redundant for him to wonder what they were doing.

"Why does the boss want us to steal a stupid box?"

"Because, ya moron, if we take the stuff inside, we can sell it the the losers who come knocking."

"But why would he want more money? We can't go anywhere, and nuthin' can come in."

"It's not about the monry you idiot! It's about him showing everybody that he can decide whether or not the live or die."

Mercer removed himself from the crate and walked to the side so that he was in clear view of the goons, and the moment they saw him they stopped dead in their ttacks even though every single one of them was holding a weapon. The pure terror of being in the presence of the lethal predaotr Zeus made them freeze completely.

"If he has such power, why is he sending lowlifes like you to do his work?" he asked forming his deadly claws on both arms. The sight of the murderous talons alone was enough to make them all turn around and run as if their lives depended on it (Mostly because it did.) Mercer shook his head. "For enforcers, they really don't handle threats well."

Just as he prepared himslf to chase after them and cut them to ribbons, he heard a light patter of footsteps emit from the mouth of the alley next to him. He kept himself wary as he approached it. He allowed his body to relax, but kept his claws on his arms when he saw the sourse of the noise. Even though he couldn't see a face dur to the poor lighting, he could tell that he was looking at a young girl with long orange hair wearing a pink sun dress. Her arms seemed abnormally pale.

"What are you doing out here alone in the dark?" Mercer asked with slight concern. Harming children was taboo for him, but he was positive that it wasn't for some of the other freaks in this city.

"Die," she said with a bubbly voice. She slowly stepped into the street, giving Mercer a full view of her.

"Holy shit," he whispered to himself. Her face was white and frozen in a permanent smile. It seemed ceramic, almost like a doll.

"Die!" she spoke with the same cheerfulness as before. She ran up to Mecer who was so shocked by the sight of her that he wasn't able to react swiftly enough to stop her from latching onto him and spitting out a stream of acid on him. He slapped her away and sent her flying, and then felt somewhat disgusted with himself for not only hitting a girl, but a child at that. He looked at the spot where she had landed her attack, his left shoulder, and saw that it appeared to be boiling for a second before slipping off of him and becoming a small black puddle on the ground.

"Die!" the freak of a child screeched as she ran up to him again and leapt at him. In one swift move motion Mercer sidestepped out of her path, turned his body so that they were facing the same direction, and then shot his left hand out forward and grasped her by the back of her head. He held tight enough so that she had no hope of breaking free, but loose enough so that he wouldn't crush her head in. She attempted to free herself by flinging her small body all about and raising her arms up and desperately clawing at his armored wrist.

"What the fuck are you?" Mercer wondered to mostly himself. He kept his hand pointed away so that she wouldn't get another shot at him.

"Die die die die!" She never slowed down in her fruitless attempts to break free.

"Is that the only word in your vocabulary?" Mercer dryly asked.

"What she is is one of Professor Pyg's Dollotrons." Mercer looked over to see Batman had apparently suddenly materialized right beside him.

"A Doll-what?"

Batman looked intently at the still-struggling child. "Pyg enjoys making people what he sees as perfect."

Mercer looked at his youthful assailant. If this is what Pyg considered 'perfect' his screw was looser than the Joker's. "So what do we do with... her?" He successfully fought off the inclination to call the Dollotron 'it'. "No wait. No we, I meant you." He dropped the now nearly unconscious Dollotron. "I'm not a babysitter." He leapt off with Batman looking at him with the same unreadable expression he always had on his face.

XXXXXX

Mercer stood on a rooftop, looking at the city and nothing at the same time. He began to question himself. Why was he protecting these people when so many of them were violent, insane, and just plain dangerous? As more and more doubts poured into him, it was halted by a sudden uneasy feeling. He was no longer alone. He turned around to see the woman who had told him about someone called Rā's Al Ghūl. Her sword wasn't drawn and her eyes were saying 'follow me'. She ran towards him and then jumped over the edge; she just passed him without a single sound. This time Mercer didn't hesitate and have chase.

XXXXXX

Mercer leaned on a wall, allowing himself to recollect himself before any more pursuit. He hadn't been following the woman so much as he had chased after signs; after the rooftop he had chased her into a subway system underground, and once they were below sea level she didn't show herself entirely to him again. He made his way to her by follow discrete noises and sights; her light running echoing, her shadow crossing a wall for not even a second. It didn't take long for him to see that she wasn't trying to lose him. She was leading him somewhere, and now he was there. He looked around the small subterranean city his target had led him to. It somehow managed to look both futuristic and old fashioned at the same time. A bunch of banners and signs spread out all around it, and all of them read "Wonder City". Several humanoid robots were also scattered around the ancient-looking town. The whole place looked like it hadn't been seen by a single living thing for eons. But looks can be deceiving.

It was clear to him why his prey wasn't leaving behind any more traces of her for him to follow; there was only one way forward, and it had to be the gigantic door on the far side of the tiny city. He walked over to it and looked at it. It seemed to haven't even been touched for centuries, and it was obviously incredibly thick. He wasn't fazed by that at all, he had destroyed barricades and obstacles that were just as sturdy with an "accidental" wave of his arm. He prepared himself to dig his fingers into the metal and tear the door right off its rusted hinges, but before he could be heard a scraping noise to his left. He looked over and watched as a portion of the wall about as big as a regular door pressed itself inward and then slid to the side, revealing a tunnel. He shrugged his shoulders and walked down it. If they were planning to ambush him, it would cost them an arm and a leg. And their heads. He reached then end of the tunnel to find a ladder that led up to a manhole cover. He simple jumped up and smashed through it. When he was on solid ground again, he looked around to find what looked somewhat like an early twentieth century plaza, except for the huge chamber right in front of him. He guessed that was where they wanted him to go. He walked into the ancient-looking room, and saw two forty-foot tall identical statues of a man wielding a sword at the far side of it. In the next instant he was surrounded by a cloud of thick smoke and when it cleared, he saw that he was surrounded by five women dressed exactly like his prey/guide, but they did have their weapons drawn and were in battle-ready positions. Before he could even react and start to tear them to pieces with his bare hands, another woman called out from behind him.

"Don't give him an excuse. None of you will last three seconds if you anger him."

The warrior relaxed their bodies and held their swords at their sides. Mercer turned around to see the smart woman who had just prevented a very gruesome bloodbath. Like the ones she was obviously above, she wore an all black outfit, except she wasn't wearing a mask and the only part of her body that wasn't covered by skin-right material was her head and most of her neck. Her hair was a light brown and much shorter than her soldiers.

The two of them stared at each other in silence for a long moment until Mercer broke it. "Is your boss too busy to see me?"

"Not at all. In fact my father is waiting for right now. We've been expecting you." She clapped her hands together twice, and a long but not very wide section of the floor behind Mercer began to rumble for a moment and then fell downward to reveal yet another tunnel. Mercer was glad that the photographic memory Band had "given" him would get him back to the surface without getting lost, and he couldn't just rocket himself upward to the city since that could cause quite a few building to collapse. The woman began walking down into the tunnel and it was clear that Mercer was intended to follow her. As a warning to all of them in case they were planning to get the drop on him, he formed his claws on both arms before following his new escort. As they desended deeper into the stone hallway, the woman of higher ranking talked to him again.

"Tell me, do you prefer Mercer, Zeus, or just Alex?"

"I could really care less. What do I call you?"

"Talia."

The two of them reached the bottom of the tunnel, passed a simple wooden door, and then began making their way up a staircase.

"Those are very impressive." Talia said eyeing his claws. "How did you get them? Did you make make them?"

"I got sick." Mercer responded flatly.

"I... see." Her voice was filled with confusion. After another few moments of silence they came to stand before another somewhat large door. Talia pulled it open and gestured for him to go in, which he did. As soon as he was inside Talia closed it but didn't dare lock it. That was sure to piss him off.

XXXXXX

The room was almost circular and moderately lit. Mercer allowed his arms to return to normal after he looked around and saw that the only ones inside were him and some man looking into something that was giving off an eerie green glow. The walls were covered with large electrical equipment. Mercer walked over to the man and looked down at what he was staring at and saw a strange small pool of pale green water that looked extremely clean and clear.

"I've been expecting you, Virus," the man said in a very withered voice breaking his gaze with the pool and looking at Mercer.

"You... look like shit," Mercer said as he looked at the man who could be nobody but Rā's al Ghūl's face. He looked like a tired and miserable old man who had every disease known to man except Redlight and Blacklight.

"I am aware, and I feel just as bad. But allow me to properly introduce myself. I am Rā's al Ghūl, Head of the Demon and leader of the League of Shadows."

"Well met. I'm assuming that my introduction is redundant since you who I am already."

"You are correct Mr. Mercer. I know a plentiful amount about who, or moreso what, you are. Why did you decide to come to Gotham? Was Manhattan getting to you?"

"Did you have your dog drag me all the way down here just for a game of Twenty Questions?" Alex tried to change the subject. He didn't want to think, let alone talk, about the place where he was labeled as many horrific things.

"I can see that you are not the type who likes to dawdle on the past," Rā's said with a weak smile. "I like that in a man, but no, the true reason why I have brought you here is a proposition. This world is doomed. All the people that inhabit it do nothing but take up space, fill the air with diluted poisons, and pollute the ground they walk on. I have a vision of a future with a far smaller population that is strong in any environment."

"They can adapt," Mercer said knowingly.

Rā's nodded his head. "This dream of mine can become a reality if we two immortals work together. With my resources and leadership with your ability to survive, we can usher in a strong, healthy new world."

"'Immortals'?" Mercer had stopped listening after the assassin leader said that one word. "You... are immortal?"

"Yes. Yes I am." Rā's had an amused smile on his lips. "I have walked this Earth for over five centuries."

"Well whatever it is you do to stay alive, could you please do it? Because honestly I'm worried that you are going to drop dead right in front of me any second now."

"Very well." He turned his body so that his back was facing the green pool and he then allowed himself to fall back into it. As soon as his body was completely submerged, the water began to bubble and the machine all around the room revved and came to life. Sparks flew out of them at random intervals. For almost a minute the chaos continued and Mercer began to wonder if the old man would drown. Finally it all died down and Mercer leaned over the pool not knowing what to expect. Much to his surprise, Rā's jolted himself up into a standing position and smirked at Alex who was looking back at him in total awe. Rā's know looked nearly a third of his age and three times as strong.

"You didn't really think you were the only one with eternal life did you?" he asked smugly as he stepped out of the pool and next to Mercer who was now leaning over and looking at the green water in amazement and bewilderment.

"Wha... What is that?"

"It's your enlightenment," Rā's replied as he gave a hard shove on Mercer's bent back.

The water again began to boil and the machinery roared back to life after he fell in.

XXXXXX

A/N: My beta and one of my consultants like what happens to Mercer.


	11. Traumatizing Miracle

A/N: When I say "digital veins" I'm referring to the lines and markings on Tony Stark's neck in Iron Man 2.

XXXXXX

He couldn't move. His body refused to do what he told it to. He couldn't even close his eyes. Even though the water he was in was bubbling like it was boiling, he didn't feel hot at all, but he didn't feel cold either. He just felt wet. A strange, indescribable sensation could be felt on every inch of his body. It didn't hurt, but it also didn't feel good at all either. It felt tingly, like a very small jolt of electricity was coursing through his entire being at the same time.

He didn't know how long he had been submerged in the green pool, but after some time the water stopped rumbling and became stagnant, and he regained control of his body. Since he was facing down, he put his arms below him so that it looked like he was about to do a pushup, which he sort of did by forcefully straightening his limbs and thrusting himself up into a standing position. He was facing the wall and turned around to see Rā's. The Demon's Head was now about ten feet away from his source of life and had his hands intertwined behind his back. He was looking at Mercer with a calm face.

Mercer bared his teeth in an expression that clearly said that he was blind with rage. He wanted to grab the Assassin Leader by his neck and hold his head under the water that made him able to be immortal until he drowned. Quite an ironic death.

"You... you motherfucking..." Mercer had a rage that was so great that he couldn't form a coherent insult or threat. He formed his claws on both his arms and held up his left one and pointed at Rā's, who didn't show any fear, or any reaction at all. He just kept his straight face and didn't move a single muscle. Mercer stepped out of the pool and took one more large step towards Rā's, cutting the gap between them almost in half. "I'm gonna dig my claw into your back, grab your fucking spine, and..." The rest of his threat died in his throat when his peripheral vision caught his claw, and he noticed that it had changed. He brought his weaponized hand up to his face so that it was about a foot in front of him, and fanned out his silver metallic-looking talons. The bottom side of them now had jagged teeth like an army knife. He began to wonder, and looked at his armored forearm and bicep. His limb now sported a noticeable amount of more spikes, and all of them looked way sharper than they had before. His pitch-black arm now had red lines that looked like digital veins going up and down it, from his shoulder to his wrist; they reminded him of a maze. He looked at his other arm, and saw that it had the exact same changes. Curiosity began to replace his fury, and he formed his lethal blade on his right arm and saw that it too had the maze-like like embedded on it except while the claws had red ones, the blade had a nightmarish black labyrinth running on it from end to end.

He made his claw reappear on his right arm and looking at Rā's with a thousand yard stare. With most of his anger now converted into confusion, he then noticed that he felt something inside of him. He felt... queasy. That was then replaced with a full-on sickness. He dropped to his hands and knees and hurled onto the floor right below his face and mouth. He coughed roughly a few times after the last of the black vomit exited him.

Two things happened next and one of them surprised him beyond belief: the small pool of puke seemed to slide over to his right hand and melted into him. That didn't surprise him. What caught him off edge was that he felt a fiery pain in his upper stomach. He had been attacked with a myriad of bullets and that didn't even tickle, so why was a mere sick bodily reaction causing him such... discomfort?

He brought himself back up to a standing position, made hos arms return to normal, and lightly gripped his head with his right hand trying to think why and how this was happening. Then he got a wild and outrageous thought. But he let it go after half a second of it being on his mind. He saw it as impossible. Whatever that... stuff was, it may have Made Rā's young again, but it couldn't possibly have done to him what he momentarily thought it did.

"Tell me Mercer," Rā's said seeing the lost look in his eyes. "What is the Lazarus Pit showing you?"

Mercer deduced that the Lazarus Pit had to be the green pool both of them had bathed in. He was confused by what he had meant by the 'showing you' part, but his confusion died away and startlment took its place. He looked all around and saw that he and the Head of the Demon were now longer in the dim chamber, but in Manhattan. Deep down he knew it was only a hallucination since they were standing in the middle of a battle between Blacklight soldiers and tanks and several Infected and Evolved that were pouring out of a Hive, but everything about it seemed so real. The noises and screeches coming from the Infected, the orders the soldiers were shouting to one another, the way both sides were assaulting each other. It even smelled like the first Outbreak did in areas where the Infected had control. The sight of the small war that killed millions and was blamed on him brought back horrid memories.

"Never forget Mercer..." Alex instantly recognized the voice but wasn't sure if it was one of the many unbearable memories that were flooding into him or part of the hallucination that he slowly began to think was real. He turned to where the voice had come from and saw Captain Cross looking intently at him. The now dead soldier spoke his next words very slowly so that they would sink into Mercer and stay there. "Penn Station."

The elite trooper then turned into sand and was blown away by a sudden gust of wind. Then out of nowhere several normal civilians approached him, all of them looking either miserable or angry. Some of them called out to him.

"You're a monster!"

"My son is dead, and you're to blame!"

"I had to bury my brother!"

"Because of you, my children will never see their mother ever again."

Like Cross before them, they all turned into sand and wind made them disappear. With them all gone, Mercer began to feel something he hadn't even thought about in a very long time. He began to feel remorse.

At that moment half of him was convinced that this was reality, but the other said that it was just a bad dream. The latter gained a dominance, and Mercer formed his now jagged claws and tried to wake himself up. He buried his silver talons into his left thigh.

That act of self-harm brought him back to reality. He was back in the circular chamber with Rā's looking at him with the same face he had had since Mercer pulled himself out of the Lazarus Pit. Mercer looked down at the claw that was still embedded in his leg, and received another shock. He was feeling pain where his talons pierced him. Due to their new jagged teeth, pulling it out of him caused more pain. He brought up the weaponized hand up to his eyes and was met with yet another surprise. His silver claws were coated with a dark red liquid. As some of it dripped of his talons, he looked down to the part of him where he had harmed himself to return from his waking nightmare to find that there was no wound. He held up his right arm which was still normal, and scraped across his forearm with one of his talons. Again, pain coursed through the spot where he had put his claws into. There was a cut on him for a brief second before Blacklight seeped out of its edges, covered it, and then seemed to make it heal instantaneously. Even though the wound was gone, the pain that came with it lingered for a moment before going away as well. He looked at his claw which was still coated with the deep crimson liquid, and he realized what it was. It was blood.

He then knew that the Lazarus Pit had done to him what he thought was impossible. He had felt remorse for the outbreak. He could bleed. He could feel the stinging sensation of pain. That Pit was nothing short of a miracle worker since it had both made him more dangerous, and had made him partially human. The first thought that wasn't traumatizing to him was a small idea that told him he now had the actual right to call himself Alexander J. Mercer.

He looked at the Demon's Head, who was still standing there in silence waiting for his answer. With everything that had happened to him in just five minutes, Mercer failed to give him an answer because his newfound humanity made him fall over and faint due to the traumatizing experience he had just gone through.

XXXXXX

When he came to, he let out a groan and rubbed his hooded head with his normal hand. He looked around and saw that he was alone on the same rooftop his guide from earlier had shown herself to him and made him pursue her. He didn't know how he got there, and he didn't really care at the moment. He leapt off into the sky in the direction of the Iceberg Lounge. He saw that even though he was what could be very loosely called human, he still had his powers, strength, and speed, and none of them were lessened in any way.

The entire way back to his home, he couldn't help but wonder how Ivy would react to this.

XXXXXX

A/N: The reason I made him like this is to add intensity. Now he can be distracted by the pain he will surely go through when fighting and his opponent has a chance to... I wouldn't say win, but get away before becoming his dinner. Plus it added the chance to see him struggle to not be omnipotent/invincible any longer.


	12. An Early Christmas For Alex

A/N: This is just a filler I wrote in boredom and writer's block.

XXXXXX

Alex slowly came awake. He let out a groan and slid his normal hand under his hood to rub his still sore head. What that Pit had done had side-effects of soreness apparently. He finished running his hand firmly along his smooth dark hair and rolled himself to his right to get into a standing position. He hoisted himself up and stretched his arms slightly.

"Sleep alright?" Ivy asked in a sensual voice as she also awoke and put herself in a sitting position.

"It's the first I've stopped moving in almost a year," Alex replied. Back when he was literally a walking heap of biomass, he never needed to rest. He was now reminded of how much the human body was dependent on energy. "It's a little... inconvenient."

"You'll get used to it." Ivy let out a small chuckle. Alex had told her everything about what had happened to him before he passed out right in front of her from chronic exhaustion. She was shocked, but she happily accepted it. They were now in the same level of humanity; able to feel pain and bleed, but also capable of doing so much more than the primitive humans could ever dream of even attempting. Plus she thought that her and a walking talking virus was a weirder relationship than that of Harley and her freakishly creepy clown.

Suddenly there was a thunderous knock on the front doors of the former high-end club. The two of them looked in confusion at each other, but then Mercer shrugged his shoulder and made his way towards the entrance and Ivy soon followed. Standing just outside the huge doors was the fourth to last person they thought they would see.

"Hiya Red!" Harley Quinn said in a very cheerful and bubbly voice. She then looked at Alex and she smiled even wider when she put her attention back on Ivy. "So I guess this means Catwoman wasn't lying to me. Ya do have a man! I just didn't believe it would be Mercy."

"'Mercy'?" Ivy said with a giggle. No matter what the situation or who it was, her harlequin of a friend would always give everybody a nickname, and most of them didn't like theirs.

"I do believe I said not to call me that," Alex pointed leaning on the doorframe.

"No. You said not to call you Merc."

"Mercy is a little worse. Are you here for a point?"

"Oh yeah. Here." She handed him a box covered with decorative paper. "Don't ask me what's in it. Mistah J wouldn't even let me see him when he handed it to me. He just held his arm outta the door with the box in his hand." She turned to leave and began walking away into the brisk November air. She made it about ten steps before she turned her waist and shoulders so that she could look back at them without stopping. "Maybe the four of us can go on a double date sometime!" she called to them and then looked back in front of her.

"Sounds fun," Ivy said with an amused smile.

"I highly doubt that," Mercer said in a somewhat quiet voice. He then looked down at the box in his hands and saw that a note was taped to the top. He grabbed it and read it to himself.

'Dear Mr. Mercer,

Your good friend the Joker came to me with a very special idea for a Christmas present for you. I am fully aware that it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but that's Joker being Joker. He hopes you enjoy it. I certainly enjoyed making it.

Sincerely...

"'The Dollmaker'?" Mercer read the alias out loud.

"Never heard of him," Ivy said.

Mercer tore the wrapping paper off the box and took the top of it off.

Ivy watched as he stared blankly at whatever was inside for a long moment. He then nonchalantly put the cover back on, and set the box down on the ground to his left side. He looked up at Ivy.

"We should return to sender. The clown's probably going to want it back when it starts snowing."

XXXXXX

AN: Am I correct to assume that you are now googling "Dollmaker"?


	13. Brains And Brawn

It was another cold night. A light snowfall covered the air as Mercer walked down one of the very few bridges that hadn't been destroyed since it simply ran over a river through the city. His hands were covered in blood. Not because he had just killed someone, but because he was holding a large hunk of meat and almost let out an animalistic snarl as he took a huge bite. Along with feeling pain and needing to sleep for a few hours once a week, his body, being human again, demanded sustenance. He casually glanced at the harbor, expecting to find nothing of significance, but a lone figure caught his eye and he stopped walking. He slightly squinted his eyes and leaned forward to get as closer a view as he could without falling over the edge of the bridge. He had always hated water, and he still detested getting wet. In the middle of the water was a very rickety looking small boat, and standing on it was a person looking down at something. Mercer pondered in what to do for a moment, and then gulped down the rest of his uncooked dinner. He took a few steps back, and ran forward before leaping off the bridge and towards the boat.

"A little midnight fishing?" Mercer asked after landing on the small barge next to the man who was concealed by the darkness. He paid Mercer no mind and didn't even look up.

"You may be fast and strong, but clearly quietness isn't a strong suit for you." The statement was said by an all too familiar voice.

"I guess then that you and I are polar opposites Batman." He leaned forward and saw that the Dark Knight was rapidly typing on a small device. "What's that?"

"Security hacker."

"So what, this floating wreck has a security system in it?" He looked around and couldn't fathom why somebody would bother taking the precautions to make sure no one could access such an ancient looking boat. He was surprised the floor hadn't collapsed beneath them yet.

"Yes. And that in itself is enough to investigate." He continued to try and hack into the system, but to no avail.

"Let me ask you something. How long have you been standing here?" Mercer said eyeing a small square shaped portion of the deck that was about a foot higher up that the rest of the floor.

"About ten minutes."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

Batman looked up at Alex with a straight face, and that was enough for Mercer. He walked over to the square in the deck and looked back to his acquaintance. Then he reached down, put his hand on the square, and tore it right off. With a simple flick of his wrist the wooden polygon landed in the water two hundred feet away from the boat they were on. Mercer looked down to the symmetrical hole and saw that it was entirely empty beneath, a whole room was waiting for them down below.

"Well, we're not just going to walk away are we?" Mercer said looking back up at Batman. He took a step forward and allowed himself to fall into the hidden chamber. He landed and was surprised by what he saw. The room was long and narrow. It was filled with oil drums and glass cases filled with various bugs and rodents. Spiderwebs were spread out everywhere in the secret chamber. At the far end of it was a man sitting in a chair who was either dead or just asleep. Despite all he had seen and been through, he was still... disturbed by his current surroundings. He began to very slowly make his way across the room, not sure of what to do when he reached the other end. He heard Batman land in the same spot he had just moments ago.

"What... the Hell?" Mercer said, not knowing if it was to himself or Batman as he looked inside a transparent case filled with cockroaches.

"Scarecrow. He probably has bases like this all around the city." Batman answered as he too slowly made his way to the opposite side of the tunnel-esque room.

Mercer by then was almost standing in front of the unconscious man when he noticed a clipboard hanging on the wall. He grabbed it and read through it.

"Where does this freak get all his money?" Mercer wondered out loud. Before anyone could give a response, the sleeping man suddenly jolted awake and screamed. After a moment of shrieking, he stopped just as quickly as he had begun and fell back into the chair he was in. Mercer looked at him with a slightly surprised face while Batman walked over and put his index and middle fingers on the man's neck.

"He's dead." The Caped Crusader said bluntly as he pulled his digits away from the world's newest corpse.

"Well duh," Mercer said back as he tossed the clipboard to the floor. "It's just that I thought he was dead before we even came in here." He shook his head a few times and made his way back towards the gaping hole in the ceiling. Batman followed him. "Speaking of dead things, I got something to show you..."

XXXXXX

The two of them were now standing on the roof of the GCPD building with Commissioner Gordon.

"It's nice to finally meet you face to face Zeus."

"The pleasure's all mine," he replied giving him a respectable salute with his right hand whilst holding a white box in his left arm. "But on to the matter at hand. I know what it is, but... how do I put this? What exactly should I do with it?" He leaned down and carefully put the box in the middle of the space between the three of them as they formed a triangle. He then quickly removed the top of the box and jolted back up into a straight standing position. He didn't want to be around Dollmaker's "present" any more than what was required. The other two men looked down at the contents. After half a second, Gordon turned away and began to gag and dry heave. Batman just kept staring at it with an unreadable face.

"I figured you'd want to see this as well," Mercer said as he stretched out his arm to Batman with the note in his hand. Like Gordon, Alex couldn't stand even the thought of being around the thing inside the box.

Batman brought himself back up and basically snatched the piece of paper out of Alex's hand and carefully observed it up and down. "How did these come into your possession?"

"The Clown's freakish girlfriend just up and literally handed it to me. Said she didn't know what was in it."

"And for good reason," Gordon said after finally recollecting himself, but refusing to look down again. "Who knows how she would've reacted."

"So... about what I mentioned earlier..."

"What do we do with it." Batman repeated. "This seems a little more deranged for even the Joker."

"What, you mean he doesn't let some other psycho cut his face off every other week?" Mercer asked dryly as he looked back down at the large portion of flesh. It was perfectly intact and the mouth was still smiling at them. "So we just give it back to him or what?" He looked back at the other two men actually expecting them to answer.

"They don't pay me enough for this job..." Gordon muttered to himself.

"I say we hold on to it for the time being." Batman announced to them.

"What?" Gordon loudly and incredulously asked.

"I think I see his point," Mercer started. "We have no idea where he is. So what, are we just going to walk around town shouting 'Joker, you want your face back?' all day long? That'd make US look insane."

Batman stared at him in silence. "You have a very disturbed mind. You know that, Zeus?"

Mercer stared off into space, not planning on giving a response to that. He then put the lid back on the box and picked it up as if it was a bomb ready to explode right in his face. He then handed the box to Gordon who looked at him with bewilderment.

"If you think I'm holding on to that thing, you really are crazy," Mercer told him.

XXXXXX

Mercer and Batman were speeding through the streets inside the Batmobile. Like Mercer with Joker's face, Batman also claimed to have something out of the ordinary, and that it was even meant for Mercer himself.

"Is it like some sort of billboard or something?" Mercer asked with impatience. His arms were crossed over his chest and his scowl was deeper than usual. He hated being in such confined spaces, it made him feel almost trapped.

"Actually, it's this." Batman kept his eyes on the road while he reached back and then handed Mercer a very peculiar object. It reminded him of a trophy. It had a big metal base and out from it sprang a few tubes of green neon light that were bent to form the shape of a question mark. It was about a foot tall.

"What the fuck...?" Mercer muttered to himself as he bent his hand and wrist to give himself several angles of views on the strange object.

"It's a calling card. A challenge," Batman answered Mercer's unspoken question. "For the other players' sake I hope you're as smart as you are brutal..."


	14. Treasure Of The Trivial Sort

**A/N: This is yet another filler. I can't leave all of you hanging while I wrack my brain trying to think of riddles.**

XXXXXX

Selina Kyle, better known as the thief Catwoman, climbed her way up the side of a building making her way towards the roof as quietly as possible. She had just pulled off a major heist and really didn't want to grab the attention of a certain hero or a lethal vigilante. Just as she grabbed onto the rooftop's ledge she froze. She had a sudden unexplainable urge to observe her arrogated cache. And she submitted to it. Using her free hand she reached down and pulled out a diamond the size of an orange. Her eyes glittered as she got lost in the sheer sight of it.

"Beautiful," she said to himself. "Just beautiful."

Instantly after talking she felt a very painful sensation on her hand holding onto the roof and let out a scream of agony. It felt like all her fingers were shattered. She innately tightened her grip on the diamond. After a minimal amount of the pain subsided she gritted her teeth and looked up. She didn't like what she saw. On top of her hand was a plain black shoe connected to a leg covered with jeans. She looked further up and saw a man wearing a leather jacket and black hoodie scowling down at her with his arms crossed over his chest.

"I take it you're Zeus?" Selina said with a strained but playful smile. "You don't look very... heroic to me."

She let out another pain filled cry as the pressure on her trapped hand increased exponentially.

"I'm not amused," Zeus dead panned. He reached down and grabbed the glistening jewel out of her hand and brought it up to his own face, looking over it at several angles.

"Hey, that's mine!" Catwoman said with obvious aggravation. Again Zeus pressed down harder on her hand.

"And now it's mine. You stole it from whoever, and I just usurped it from you." He looked at it more closely. "I have never understood humanity's fascination with something like this. Why would you kill each other over something as trivial as a rock?"

"A rock?" Carwoman almost shouted with disbelief. "That's not just some stupid worthless stone. It's almost priceless!"

"Oh really?" Zeus formed his claws on his open hand and began running one of his talons along the side of the diamond, scraping off pieces of it. "I suppose now it has some sort of a price on it."

Catwoman stared up at him with wide eyes. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"This." He pulled his claw away and crushed the diamond after clenching his hand into a fist. He opened it up and took in a deep breath. Catwoman watched in awe as he blew into his open palm and silver dust flew into the air and became invisible within seconds. "So pointless..."


	15. Playing With Dolls Part One

Mercer was sitting on the edge of the makeshift bed of his and Ivy's while she slept soundly. Even though it was made of nothing but plants, she managed to make it feel softer than a cloud. He actually did feel comfort when he laid down in it, and Ivy always looked forward to the one time of the week where they would actually share the bed and sleep together. She felt something for him she hadn't felt for anything but plant life in years.

Alex intently stared at the trophy he had be given. It never stopped glowing. He couldn't figure out what it was for. Was it some sort of custom key? Did it activate something? He just didn't know.

Suddenly a noise of electrical static began to emit from the question mark shaped object. Then an unfamiliar voice filled in.

"Can you hear me Zeus? I know you can."

"If you, then why bother asking..." Alex trailed off. He was unsure if this communication system was like a phone line or just one-way. Ivy came back to the world of the awake and wrapped her arms around Alex's waist while resting her head on his right shoulder.

"I am the ingenious enigma known as the Riddler. And you have definitely caught my attention. It's obvious that you're stronger than a berserker, but are you smarter than a chimp? I have decided to deduce this by concocting a little match of wits. And if you don't play... innocent people will die." His voice was completely serious. "So why don't we start? Riddle me these: What kind of bird packs a wallop? Secondly, a man gives one of his sons ten cents and gives the other one fifteen cents. What time is it?" The noise from the trophy died completely.

Mercer knew that his trophy had served its purpose and crushed it in his hands. Ivy let out a barely audible sigh. This sort of thing and action meant Alex would once again take a leave.

XXXXXX

He walked down the empty streets. It was another brisk night and snow was lightly falling. It was unusually quiet, and for the first time since he had arrived in the decadent city, Mercer thought it actually looked... somewhat peaceful. His thoughts were focused on the riddles he had been coerced to solve. Either of them made any sense, but the answers were obviously related to the final destination. Why else would Riddler have given him both at the same time?

"Packs a wallop..." Mercer murmured to himself. He had decided to deduce the solution to the bird one first since it sounded easier. Initially he thought the answer had been an ostrich since it was clearly something large. But he shrugged it off. Riddler would have been crazier than the Joker to want Mercer to track down some random ostrich. He put his left index finger and thumb on opposite ends of his lips and began thinking again. If these were question revolving around science, he would have the Riddler in an iron grip at that very moment. But these riddles weren't scientific, they were just random and lead him to wherever Riddler wanted him to go. He looked up and saw a building half way through construction. The city had unanimously agreed to build a new hospital to treat those who were infected with the virus. Mercer knew it was pointless. Once they got Blacklight, the only way they would even have a prayer for survival would be if he injected a little bit of himself into them. That would be a very bad situation. He continued to look at the building. He glanced to the side of it and saw a...

"Crane..." Mercer said slowly to himself. Realization struck him. He found the answer. Before he do anything about it, a car rocketed past him, nearly hitting him head-on.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Mercer shouted as he jumped back a few times after the vehicle zoomed past him. He decided to return later. Right now someone had to be taught a lesson on looking at what's right in front of them. He ran after the speeder. It didn't take long to catch up.

"Hey! Are you blind?!" Mercer shouted towards the driver side window. It was deeply tinted so he couldn't see inside. It rolled down and Mercer was surprised by what he saw. The driver was androgynous since he or she was wearing something that was a cross between a labcoat and an overcoat. It was a dark grey. It had a very large hood that concealed the owner's face and head completely except for a few green dreadlocks that snaked onto his or her shoulders. He looked past the unidentifiable person and at the passenger. He saw a woman's body dressed in a very skimpy outfit. He could tell she was dead because she was unnaturally pale and her eyes were frozen open.

The driver could tell that Mercer was fully aware of the situation and floored it. Mercer was appalled by what he had seen and slowed down. But he almost instantly regained his wits. He formed his Whipfist and fired it forward into the car's rear bumper. He made the mistake of pulling back too hard too quickly and the silver metal piece of the vehicle dislodged from the actual car.

"Damn it." Mercer growled to himself. He decided to pursue this... he didn't exactly know what it was. A murderer? A necrophile? Either way he leapt to the roofs so the culprit wouldn't see him following.

Mercer made sure to stay invisible the entire time he tailed the vehicle. The driver made sure to not draw anymore attention to him or her. He went the speed limit and didn't even get close to the few walking pedestrians he came across. After about an hour, the car pulled into the drive of a very huge mansion. Mercer stopped at the iron gates as he watched the driver pull up to the main doors. Even though he was very far away Mercer could tell that the driver was pulling the dead woman out of the car and into the manor. After a minute of waiting, Mercer effortlessly jumped over the gate and made his way into the huge house. He was thankful that the door was unlocked, since forcing it open would have brought him a lot of undesirable attention. He quietly walked in and was surprised by how normal it looked. Stereotypical of the lobby of a mansion, except everything was dusty. Over to the left he thought he saw a very realistic mannequin. He looked to the dust-covered floor and saw that his prey had left him a trail off footprints. He followed them up one of the two flights of stairs and down a hallway. He found that unlike the front room, everything was tidy in the halls he ventured through. As he past one of the dozens of doors, he stopped and listened as voices emitted from the other side of it.

"Aaahhh, a perfect specimen. Excellent work Matilda."

"Thank you father. It took a while to lure her away from everyone else."

"Well your patience never fails to pay off generously. Come, the night is still young. Perhaps we can go and find another potential doll."

"But what about Zeus?"

"Don't worry about him. His agenda involves searching for crazies and walking into explosions. Unlike all the other idiotic criminals in this city, our family takes its time to be discrete whilst fulfilling our vision."

Mercer made himself disappear as the two of them opened the door and walked out of the room. One of them was the driver he had followed there, and the other was a sight to see. He had dreadlocks shorter than his accomplice's but they were the same color. He wasn't wearing a hood and his mask made him look like a zombie that had been pieced together with several different patches of flesh. His outfit made him look like a mixture of a butcher and a surgeon. They both lumbered off down the way he had come earlier, and Mercer emerged from the darkness and crept into the room the hideous duo had just exited. He initially thought about going after them, but his curiosity as to what was inside the room got the better of him. When he looked inside, he immediately regretted it. In the room there was a lot of mannequins, except after he took a closer look he could see they weren't dummies at all. They were bodies. Or at least they had been. Now they were ceramic looking and their faces were frozen without a definite expression. And they all had poses that made them seem to be still alive but frozen in time. All of them had small rows of stitches going out from both ends of their lips. He felt himself getting sick to his stomach at the sheer sight of all of them, and he staggered backwards out of the room. Then he felt something massive collide with his back.

XXXXXX

Dollmaker and his 'daughter' Matilda, who had since recreated herself as Dollhouse, were just about to exit the mansion when Dollmaker heard a crash from up stairs.

"An intruder?" He wondered out loud.

""Should I go back and help Orifice?" Matilda asked as she pulled out a knife.

"No." He gestured for her to be calm and she obeyed. "He can handle it."

"But what it's someone who's a collectible?"

Dollmaker let out a laugh. "If it were someone of that stature they wouldn't have been seen and assaulted by Orifice so quickly. Let's go."

XXXXXX

Mercer crashed into a desk inside the room and it shattered behind him. He groaned and shook his head to clear his vision. Whoever had punched him could really brawl. He looked over and saw his assailant cracking his knuckles. Like the other freaks in the house he looked like his face was made up of several people's dead flesh. But unlike the others, he was huge and extremely muscular. Almost like Bane or Killer Croc.

"Hope you enjoyed the scenery punk," he said with attitude. He pulled out a large knife. "Because my old man's gonna make you a permanent part of it!"

Alex picked himself up and cracked his neck. This zombified freak had no idea who he was fucking with. "I'm gonna tear your head clean off your shoulders and have it bronzed."

"Look at what you did!" Orifice shouted. One of the corpses his father had dollified was now shattered after he tried to throw a vicious punch at the hooded intruder and missed.

"What I did? I'm not the one who killed them." Mercer spoke calmly.

Orifice then became extremely angry. He ran towards Mercer and swiped his knife across his face. Mercer let out a sharp cry of pain and slapped his hand to his left cheek to find that the damage had already been repaired, but the pain still lingered for a moment.

"Nobody destroys my father's work! I'm gonna rip your eyes out of their sockets and shove them down your throat!"

"You're a rather crude person you know that?" Mercer said with his signature calmness. He formed his Hammerfists and waited for his assailant to charge closer to him, and when he did Mercer swung one arm forward and made the freak soar backwards through a wall and clear into another room. He then reared his other arm back and made himself fly as well by thrusting it forward. He very nearly met his target but missed by centimeters. His heavy fists collided with the floor and it collapsed, making both of them fall down to the mansion's ground floor. Mercer coughed a few times to clear his mouth of debris. After he stood up Orifice delivered a powerful punch to his stomach and he slid back several yards on his feet. This dead looking freak was wasting his time; Mercer needed to find the man who could only be the Dollmaker. He struck the floor in front of him with a punch that made the entire house shake. In the next second a portion of the ceiling collapsed and landed on top of his opponent. Satisfied with his deconstructive handy work, Mercer turned around and made his way for the huge doors but stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a growl, and then the sound of several things being flung into the air.

Orifice was now aggravated into a blind rage. He charged at Mercer screaming a bloodcurdling war cry. In the second he was sliced cleanly in half.

Mercer changed his blade back into his normal arm as he watched a pool of blood slowly cover the floor. "Brainless moron..."

The next second Mercer sprang out of the mansion to find that the other two had disappeared. He had to track them down. He sprinted across the vast lawn and jumped over the metal gates, headed back towards the city's core.

XXXXXX

"Hey Batman, have you noticed anything... strange about Zeus lately?"

"Like what Oracle?" he asked with actual curiosity as he raced down the streets in hot pursuit of bank robbers who were trying to lose him. They would fail horribly.

"Well recently I've been observing him, and he hasn't harmed anyone except the Rogues. I mean back when he and Bane butted heads he brought down a news chopper without a second thought. And before that he slaughtered dozens of Joker's men without a moment's hesitation. But nowadays he acting a little more like you. Why?"

"Maybe I'll just ask him myself."

"What? What do you mean?"

Batman didn't answer. He disconnected the line and looked down. He car was suspended in the air as it was being held there by Mercer who was looking back up at him. Batman killed the engine and Zeus set down the Batmobile with neither contempt nor carefulness. He walked over to the driver side window.

"We've got a problem Batman..."

XXXXXX

"Did you really have to kill him?" Batman asked. He could see the uneasiness Mercer had the first time they raced through the city in the Batmobile.

"It was him or me." Mercer stated.

"Are you sure you remember where the mansion is?" Batman asked letting go of the subject. There was nothing he could do.

"Yeah. We're here." The car came to a screeching halt and Batman looked out to his side and sure enough there was an old looking manor house.

XXXXXX

Mercer stood in the doorway fighting the need to shiver. Despite being through such a nightmarish reality back in Manhattan he still felt disturbed by the sight of Dollmaker's handy work. He had seen so much more, and yet Batman could handle this situation far more better than he currently was. "What is wrong with me?"

"What?" Batman called over as he continued inspecting the 'dolls' carefully, as if they were still among the living.

"N-no-nothing!" Mercer quickly replied. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. His discomfort would thankfully come to a close when Batman abruptly stopped his investigation and put two fingers up to his head.

"... We're on our way Oracle... yes, 'we' Zeus is standing right next to me... he knew where to find Dollmaker's safehouse." He lowered his fingers and looked at a slightly confused Alex. "We now have another problem."

XXXXXX

One the department's detectives enlightened them of the entire situation.

"We got a tipoff. Gordon's gone missing, possibly kidnapped."

Zeus and Batman looked at each other at the exact same time. It couldn't have been just coincidence that Gordon had vanished and Dollmaker had gone out to search for more victims on the same night.

"What's the name of the informant?" Batman demanded.

XXXXXX

"You can just forget it Bats!" the informant spat out. He was gripped by his neck and the Caped Crusader was looking at him with violence radiating off of him. "If I tell ya where he is, the doc will kill me!" He smiled wickedly. "And we both know YOU won't."

"Perhaps... but I can't say the same about him." Batman spoke with a very leveled voice.

The informant's smile vanished. "Who?" In the next instant he felt something take a strong grip on his cranium and what felt like knives dig into his face. Batman released him, and he went higher into the air. Whatever was holding him turned him so that he was looking at a face he never wanted to see in his life. "Oh no..."

Zeus looked at him with a faint scowl. "I've no time for your insipid mockery." He raised his free hand and placed a claw on the informant's forehead.

"WAIT! Okay okay..." The informant began to weep in pure terror.

XXXXXX

"You know, since he called Dollmaker 'the doc' this is rather obvious." Mercer said as the Batmobile pulled up to the old and now abandoned hospital.

"If you're trying to be funny, it's not working Zeus." Batman dead panned.

"And if you are trying to be boring, it IS working," Mercer retorted with a smirk. He had an unexplainable urge to mess with his incessantly brooding colleague. "Shall we?" He began to walk towards the desecrated building, but he didn't make it two steps before Batman took a strong hold on his right arm.

"If we're going to work together on this, I need you to give me your word that you won't kill any of them, and if you find the Commissioner first you'll help him to safety."

"No promises on the first part."

They entered the apparently empty building. It was dead quiet. The main hall led in two different directions. Batman wordlessly gestured for Mercer to take the left, which he did after giving Batman a dismissive wave of his now clawed hand.

XXXXXX

"We have uninvited guests." Dollmaker said to his family as he observed security monitors; the hulking Bentley, Sampson, and Matilda who was now dressed in a white nurse's uniform all awaited for his orders. "Deal with them and bring them to me."

XXXXXX

Mercer walked down the halls with a nonchalant aura. If he made noise and they came after him it was their funeral. For nearly twenty minutes he wandered the halls no exactly sure where he was going but positive he would get there eventually. Finally he felt something out of the ordinary as he passed a door that led to a room for the ill. He slowly pushed it open and looked inside. There was a barely conscious James Gordon lying down handcuffed to a hospital bed. Next to him sitting in a chair was a young girl. And she was holding a knife.

"I'm sorry..." The young girl said. She advanced toward the Commisioner.

"No you're not," Mercer spoke up catching her attention. She stopped on a dime and stared at him. "But you will be." He walked towards the duo and grabbed the knife out of her hands and crushed it in his fist. Even though he had just destroyed her weapon and was towering over her with his claws reflecting what little light was in the room, the little girl didn't seem fazed at all.

"Zeus?" Gordon slowly said with a struggle.

"In the... flesh I guess it's called." He leaned down and grabbed the chain on the cuffs and like the knife crushed it into metallic dust. "Listen, when you leave this room, take a right and follow the hall. Eventually you'll reach the building's entrance."

"Thank you." Gordon needed help to get into a standing position."

"So what should I do with her?" Mercer nodded to the little girl.

"Nothing!" Gordon answered quickly. He knew Zeus would rip her to shreds without a second glance. "She was kidnapped by Dollmaker. I'll take her to safety."

Mercer looked at him questionably for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders and left them to their own devices. He had promised to help Gordon, not be his bodyguard. Besides, the Comissioner was a seasoned cop and the girl was now unarmed.

For another lengthy interval he crept down the empty halls. He was about to come across the very end of the building and begin making his way back towards the front when he heard even more voices in another room and he pressed his head up to the cold door. The voices inside were somewhat familiar.

"Can we record our newest Doll-to-be? I'd like to have more than just my memory to remember the fear you put in their eyes."

"No. Wait until after tonight's event."

"Tonight's event?" Mercer repeated to himself with a whisper so quiet he could barely hear it himself. His attention shifted to the door near the end of the hall. Bright lights were shining out from below it and inexplicable noises could be heard. He walked to and opened it. He found himself in the observation level of the hospital's operating theater. And in the pit he saw Batman with thick wires digging into his hands and feet. Charging at him was a small horde of...

"Jokers?" Mercer said to himself in disbelief. "What the fuck is going on here?"

Mercer looked on in confusion and shock as the cavalry of clowns charged at Batman. The Dark Knight attempted to fight back, but was instead flung around the room via the thick cables ensnaring his limbs. It didn't take a genius to see that this was going to end very badly very quickly. As he continued to watch the horrific scenario play out, Mercer didn't realize that someone was looking at him.

"Oh my God..." Matilda said quietly but just loud enough for Dollmaker to hear her.

"What? What could possibly be going wrong?" he asked without diverting his eyes from the pit filled with clowns and a bat.

"It's Zeus." She walked over right next to him and guided his startled eyes to the inhuman antihero by pointing at him across on the opposite side of the operating theater.

"A minor setback," Dollmaker stated. "Bentley, go take care of him."

"Yes Doctor," the massive family member said as he lumbered off.

XXXXXX

Things looked bleak for the Caped Crusader. His hands and legs were no longer under his control, but were being forced around by the cables imbedded in him which were obviously being remotely controlled. The Jokers were continuously charging at him, but they all came to halt at the sound of shattering above them. Immediately after, Zeus landed hard in the middle of the pit on his back. He let out a groan as he rolled over onto his stomach and planted his hands at his sides and pushed himself up back into a standing position.

He looked at the multiple Jokers staring at him in shock. "What?" Bentley then landed right behind him and delivered a powerful punch to his back, launching him across the pit and embedding him in the wall. He pushes himself out of the wall and turned to face the hulking zombie. He had murder in his eyes. The Jokers had enough since to clear a path unless they felt like getting in the crossfire.

"This could be interesting." Dollmaker said to both himself and Matilda as he eyed the imminent chaos about to unfold beneath him. "Get the camera..."

Zeus cracked his neck. He wasn't in the mood to mess around with this freak like he did the other one in the mansion. Slowly his entire body became coated with Blacklight. It hardened and became spiky all over him. His face became covered by a sliver visor that covered him from head to neck. He challenged Bentley to attack him with a mocking gesture; the zombie-like behemoth responded with a loud battle cry. He charged and came at Zeus with a running punch. Zeus caught Bentley's massive fist with his hand and shattered all the bones in it with a light squeeze (it was light to him at least). Bentley let out a pain-filled shriek and grasped his destroyed hand in his still intact one. He stepped back a few times grimacing. He growled and looked up to see a black and grey blur bury a seven foot long Blade in his head right between his eyes.

Zeus didn't even bother consuming the freak, he looked incredibly... unappetizing. He then felt like someone had just given him a friendly pat on his back and a loud bang. He turned around to see one of the Jokers grinning at him and holding a sawed-off shotgun with smoke coming out of the barrel.

"Idiot." Zeus stated. With his Armor active and the visor covering his visage, his voice strangely sounded as if it wasn't there at all. He replaced his blade with his Whipfist and launched it right into the fake Joker's stomach. The false clown let out a gasp which also made a cloud of blood escape from his lips. He dropped his gun and put his hands on the spiky black cable that was going clear through him. He looked at the Whipfist's line and then up to Zeus with wide eyes and a stream of blood seeping from his lips. Zeus retracted his weapon out of the jester, and the freak fell to the ground already dead.

The rest of the clowns met the same horrific fate in about twelve seconds.

He made his armor disappear and looked over to find that Batman had since freed himself from the metal strings.

"Was that really necessary?" Batman asked him in his emotionless voice.

"Them or me, Batman. Them or me." He turned and began to walk away. "Anyway, I found Gordon. He's out and safe. Now shouldn't we find Dollmaker?"

They looked up to the spot in the observation deck, and saw that it was empty. They sprinted off to find what was left of The Dollmaker Family. After searching through nearly every room on the floor they were on, the unlikely duo made their way outside. There were scores of police cars waiting outside.

"Have you captured the Dollmaker?" Batman called out.

"No, we thought you got to him." Gordon responded.

"Impossible." Mercer said to whoever would listen. "They couldn't have possibly snuck past all of them..."

"On that we agree." Batman said. He began looking around very carefully. He then walked over to Gordon, who was sitting down covered in a blanket. Dollmaker had damaged him while he was still unconscious. "Dollmaker and his accomplice are no longer inside the hospital. And rather than letting Zeus do it, I suggest all of you can out and find the two of them before either Zeus does, or more people become Dolls."

Gordon nodded approvingly and stood up to address his force. "Everybody listen up! Dollmaker is somewhere around here and we are NOT going to let him get away! Fan out and form a perimeter! If you see him, take him alive at all costs! He may have more hostages hidden around the city!"

They all let out and did as they were told. Within twenty seconds Batman and Zeus were the only ones left, and the latter was deep in thought. How could that man get away? Then it hit him like a speeding car. There was more than one way out. But that still didn't explain where he went.

"This just doesn't make sense." He muttered to himself. A whirring sound came from above, and it instantly caught his attention. He launched himself into the air and successfully got a hold of a helicopter at the tail. He buried his claws into the metal hide and then thrusted himself forward to the door which he then tore right of its hinges. He looked inside to find two frightened police officers screaming and then staring at him. He cut his loses and let go of the chopper, landing on a rooftop. He looked around for another police helicopter to search.

"Oh shit..." Apparently when word got out about Gordon's disappearance, it turned into a full-on witch hunt. There were at least twenty choppers spreading out around the city. By the time he would happen upon Dollmaker, the killer would've caught on to what he was doing and bailed.

He let out a sigh and gave a dismissive wave to the dark horizon. "Let the cops handle the freak. I got something to do..."

He made his way back to the rotting hospital and made his way into the crane's control room. He tore the door off and stepped inside the control room. He casually sat down in the chair and rested his legs on the control console. He began to ponder on the riddle he hadn't yet solved.

"Two sons... ten and fifteen..." He let out a frustrated groan. "God, I hate riddles." He let out a sigh and continued wracking his mind. "Two kids... two... fifteen and ten... twenty-five... Wait a second." The answer dawned on him.


	16. Answers And Questions

_A/N:_ This is just another filler. I was going to add on to it, but I wanna see if you can guess...

XXXXXX

"1:45," Alex said to himself. That was the second riddle's answer. What he couldn't find an answer to is why had the Riddler's given him both of them at the same time? They had no relevancy to each other at all. But then an idea popped into his mind. Riddler had desired for him to be either by the crane or inside of it at quarter to two. That left him with two questions; did it mean in the morinng or the afternoon, what time was it? He made a mental note to buy a wristwatch sooner rather than later. Even though he could form any article of clothing on himself at will, anything mechanical was most likely out of the question. It was still cold and dark out, so it was ossibly around the specified time. Suddenly Mercer heard a beeping noise emit from beneath him. He leaned forward and lowered his arm to under the seat. He felt something small, thin, rectangular, and smooth, and he grabbed onto it. He brought it up to his line of vision. It looked like a video tablet and on the screen was a green question mark. Slowy, the symbol then faded, and in its place was yet another question.

'In the mirror, you must find a way to survive.

What is 4 + no. 5?'

"What the...?" Mercer murmured to himself. Suddenly he heard a small explosion far below the controls of the massive crane. Than a low-pitched creaking filled the immediate atmosphere. Slowly the small cubic room tilted to the right. Mercer then figured out what had happened, and that it must have been 1:45. The crane was going down. He let out a groan that was both of boredom and frustration. He had initially hoped that after dealing with Dollmaker and solving Riddler's stupid puzzles he could just go back to Ivy and kick back for a few seconds. "Every single time..."

XXXXXX

Commisioner Grodon was never one to lie down when duty called, even if he had held hostage by a madman and his so-called family in an abandoned hospital. As soon as he heard the crash fill the air, he leapt into a police cruiser and made his way towards the wreckage, which turned out to be simply around the corner. He pulled up to the crane that was in pieces in the street. The control room had held together considerably good. As he observed the mess, he wondered who had caused it. Explosions could have been anyone in the city. He jumped back and pulled out his revolver when the door to the control room flew off the hinges and across the street. He watched as Zeus pulled himself out of the small room and fell onto his back in the middle of the street and let out a groan.

"What the hell happened here?" Gordon asked as he walked over and returned his gun into his coat.

"Some moron calling himself Riddler," Zeus answered pulling himself up. He looked into his right hand and saw that he still had a grasp on the tablet. "Nothing too big. I'm sure he's done for a while."

"What makes you think that?"

"I'm very... intuitive." Zeus smirked at him.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Why would I not?" Zeus asked with confusion.

"Your left shoulder's on fire." Gordon replied level-headedly.

Zeus looked over to the specified body part and saw that it was true. He patted himself out calmly. When the small orange flame was extinguished he looked back at the veteran cop. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'll be on my way."

"You are rally just gonna walk away from this?" Gordon asked in complete disbelief. "You should be dead!"

"I'm beyond life and death Commissioner." He walked away and muttered under his breath, "at least I used to be..."

XXXXXX

He walked about three hundred feet before a many number of lights caught his eye. He looked in the direction they were in and saw that a few fire and scores of candles were ablaze in front of the police station. He also saw several men around them... and could see that they worked for the Joker. Curious to see what they were doing and also not wanting to cause a pointless one-sided battle royal, he will the Black light of his leather jacket and hoodie to morph into a brown leather duster so he wouldn't be recognized. He made his way through the light snowfall towards the small crowd. Along with the flames were pictures of the clown everywhere as well.

"What's all this about?" Mercer asked to anyone who would answer. None of them did, they just kept sadly talking about things Mercer didn't bother eavsdropping on. He looked around and saw at least twenty men sadly talking to each other as they looked at either the pictures or the flames. He couldn't figure out why they were so mournful. Suddenly, he noticed a silver briefcase that was just outside the illumination of the fires and was standing upright. Curiousity again took over and he walked over to it. He picked it up and looked behind him to see if anybody was looking at him. None of them had, they were too busy mourning for some odd reason. He opened it up and almost fainted.

"Something interesting?' Someone right behind him asked. Mercer instantly recognized the voice. Bruce Wayne was standing there with him.

"If an enormous amount of cash is interesting... yes," Mercer replied with a smirk as he turned around. Wayne was also incognito with an overcoat and winter cap. Alex set the silver case back on the ground but left it open. He picked up a decent sized wad of it and ran it through his fingers. "There has to be at least a million dollars in that thing. But on a different matter, why are all these Joker goons here?"

"They are here..." Bruce started as he snatched the money out of Alex's hand and dropped it back into the briefcase. "Because they heard about the face."

"So? What's that to them? It's not as if they lost their faces. But what's with this cash?"

"Probably a bribe for the Joker's flesh." Bruce answered as he also began to think deeply.

"Who on Earth would want to purchase a face?"

"I can think of two..."


	17. Old Friends

Before either of the suspects could be named off, the two of them were then acquainted by a third man.

"Quite a spectacle, eh Bruce?"

Alex and Bruce turned their heads to see a man who was wearing a brown trench-coat and had short red hair. It was obvious that he was strong.

"Indeed it is, Tommy." Wayne replied with a very dark tone.

"So who are you?" The man named Tommy asked Alex.

"This is my... friend Alex Mercer." Bruce answered for him. Mercer did not mind that his real name was used. Blackwatch had destroyed everything relating to the Outbreak, including who was involved. Plus Mercer wasn't that uncommon of a name. The only ones who knew of his involvement in Manhattan were himself, the Bat Family, Ivy, and Waller.

"Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Mercer." Tommy held out his hand.

Alex shook it firmly. "Actually, it's Doctor Mercer." Tommy tightened his grip and smiled wickedly. Mercer kept his faint scowl and also squeezed, almost to the point of shattering Tommy's bones. He let go before that could happen.

"Quite the grip you have... Doctor." Tommy complimented while rubbing his aching hand.

"Thank you... Tommy." Alex gave him a small smirk.

"I didn't know you were in town when the quarantine was put into affect Tommy." Bruce quickly said, wanting to change the subject.

"Yes, I had some business to attend to when they cut the city off from the world. What luck right?"

Alex could clearly see that the two men standing there with him had a very... complex history together. It was the way the spoke to and looked at each other. Their eyes clearly told him that they once shared a bond, and it had been shattered like glass.

"Well, I don't know about you two, but all these pictures of that... clown are creeping me out. I will see you around." Tommy took his leave.

"Just who was that exactly?" Mercer asked after Tommy had left.

"An old friend," Bruce dead panned.

Alex looked at his acquaintance with a blank face, but shook the matter off. After all, who was he to judge? He didn't have any friends for the majority of his first life. He looked back down to the tablet, and saw that a keyboard had appeared on the touch-screen; obviously, it was to put in the answer, which Alex did. "South."

"What?" Bruce asked with confusion.

"Riddles." He continued looking at the tablet as yet another question wrote itself onto the screen.

"If you know me, you'll want to share me. But if you share me, I'm gone. What am I?"

"This is getting both stupid and easier." Alex stated mostly to himself as he typed in the obvious answer. As soon as he did, a somewhat familiar voice emitted from the rectangular device.

"Well done, King of Olympus, you've shown you have the intellect of a modern human child." The screen lit up to show him an overhead view of a map of the city, and somewhere in the southwestern part of it, a small green question mark blinked on and off in an unending pattern, as did a red triangle that was over the exact spot Mercer was.

"Moron," Mercer grumbled under his breath. He also stalked away from the shrines and into the night, leaving Bruce to think alone.

**XXXXXX**

It took two minutes for someone to attack him. He had since reverted to his hood and tribal leather jacket, and he heard a gunshot ring and echo. He also felt a huge wave of a burning sensation go through his left leg. In a matter of moments the Blacklight repaired him, and he frantically and angrily looked around see who was stupid enough to attack him. Finally he spotted someone. It was dark so only an outline of the man could be seen, and a strange ringing sound periodically filled the air.

"So you are the one they're all afraid of," he said in an extremely raspy voice. "Heh. You ain't so scary to me." He stepped into the light, and Mercer was surprised by his appearance. The left his face was horribly burnt and scarred. And his suit was a resemblance of it on the same side as well. He was holding a double-barrel shotgun.

"Nor are you to me," Alex replied. "But you are rather ugly."

"Funny guy, eh? Let's see what happens next." He held out a coin, and flipped it into the air. At the right moment, the scarred man snatched it out of the air with his right hand and slapped it onto his left wrist. He looked at it, and then looked back to Zeus. "Looks like you lose. Let's get him boys!"

In the next second, at least forty men chuckled and laughed as they appeared from the shadowed street. Some were unarmed, and other hand lethal blunt objects. They began to surround him.

"Please tell me all of you aren't _that_ stupid." Zeus stated. The goons continued to surround him. "Alright. It's your funeral." He slammed his right fist into his open left hand and cracked his neck.

**XXXXXX Thirty-seven Seconds Later XXXXXX**

"What the Hell are you?" The man Zeus came to know as Two-Face asked. He was suspended in the air as Zeus wrapped his clawed hand around his neck. Two-Face held his hands on the spiked arm, trying to keep himself elevated so his neck wouldn't feel the strain of his entire body pulling it down. All his men were dead, and half had been consumed.

'I'm the one who's gonna..." Zeus trailed off into silence and looked off into space.

"What?" Two-Face didn't understand what was going on.

_**"SHUT** **UP**_!" Zeus screamed. He then lost all his apparent anger and looked away again. He had a very uneasy feeling that he was being watched. And not by one of the members of the Bat Family. He looked around and saw no one. He then felt like something was one him, and it didn't belong there. He looked down at his body and saw a red dot directly over his heart. "What the...?"

A loud bang filled the atmosphere. Zeus let out a sound that was a combination of a gasp and a groan. He dropped Two-Face and staggered back a few steps. It felt like somebody had punched him in the chest. Pain filled his entire body, but it subsided and he remained standing.

"How... how are you still alive?" Two-Face asked in amazement.

Zeus looked over at him, and pointed a jagged talon at him. "I'll deal with you later." He leapt off in search of the idiotic assassin.

He had a full view of the horizon as his eyes glowed with a red aura. His Thermal Vision showed him that no living thing was up there with him. He shrugged it off. If the assassin saw that he had failed to kill Mercer, he would undoubtedly try again. Mercer decided to go to the location indicated on the Riddle Tablet.

**XXXXXX**

It led him to an old warehouse. Not wanting to dawdle any longer, he simply flicked his wrist and the door flew right off its hinges in splinters. He walked in and saw that the entire place was mostly empty, and that it was filled with a dim green light. Question marks were painted all over the walls.

"Welcome to my humble home Zeus," the Riddler's voice rang out over a PA system. "Now that you've found it, all you have to do is find _me_."

"Alright then." Mercer made his Thermal Vision replace his regular eyesight. After spotting an orange and red blot on the other end of the vast room, he shot his Whipfist out at it, got a hold, and retracted it. In a matter of a second the Riddler was being held in the air by his neck with an annoyed looking superhuman scowling up at him.

"Well, you can solve problems much quicker than Batman," Riddler said.

"Is there a reason for you harassing me nonstop?"

"Yes," Riddler replied instantly. "And if you would be please put me down, I'd be more than happy to tell it to you."

Mercer gave him an unreadable look, but obliged and allowed the Enigma to stand on his own to feet.

"Thank you." Riddler dusted himself off and looked back at Mercer. "The reason i have led you here tonight is very simple..." He dropped to his knees, looked up at Alex with desperation, and began to beg. "I need your help! Someone's after me, and not even Batman can stop him!"

Mercer stared at him in silence for a few long seconds before giving his answer. "Alright."

Riddler stared at him with wide eyes. "Really?"

"No one kills you... rogues, as he calls you, except me."

Once again the air was filled with an echoing bang, and Mercer felt as if someone had punched him in the back.

"I am really getting sick of being shot at today."

"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain." Said a muffled voice from behind him.

Mercer turned around to see a man wearing a brown trench coat pointing two guns at him. His head reminded Mercer of mummies.

"Artistotle," Mercer said. "That phrase must not apply to you, since it's plain stupid to attack someone who can kill you with a flick of his wrist."

"I merely want the moron behind you," the man replied without lowering his guns. He turned his vision towards Riddler. "We meet again... partner."

"Don't let him kill me!" Riddler begged to Mercer.

"Like I said before," Mercer looked back to the gunman. "No one kills you freaks but me."

**XXXXXX**

**A/N:** A couple of weeks ago, I got a PM that was somewhere between a suggestion and a plea to write an alternate version of Battle For The Cowl in this story. At first I brushed it aside, but now that I think about it more, I'm starting to like it. So I'm asking what all of you think of that potential arc.


	18. Surprises

**: I apologize deeply for this delay. Personal matters have flooded into my life, I've been searching for a job, and I've been assisting a good friend of mine, Phen0m20, in writing a story that is quickly becoming his flagship. But I'm back, for now at least.**

**XXXXXX**

"If you walk away right now and leave that moronic failure behind, I might consider letting you live," the bandaged man said. His voice was somewhat muffled, but Alex could swear he had heard it before.

"How about _you_ do that?" Alex suggested. "The riddle-obsessed 'moron' is with me."

"Really?" Riddler said hopefully.

"Don't get comfortable. You're mine, not his." Alex said coldly.

"Very well." The mummy said calmly. He pointed both of his powerful handguns directly at Alex. "It is said that David vanquished the unstoppable giant Goliath with but a single stone. Well today, Hush shall defeat the walking god Zeus by the might of his own hand." He fired four rounds into Mercer, two in the heart, one in each lung. Hush stood there, a triumphant smirk hidden behind his makeshift mask, waiting for the one everybody was afraid of to fall to the ground lifeless and forever gone. He was shocked beyond comprehension when Zeus merely looked at him with an expression that somehow managed to have traces of both irritation and amusement.

"What else you got?" He began walking forward, advancing towards the man who called himself Hush. The masked gunman began to desperately empty hid guns' magazines in to Mercer. Alex paid no mind to it as his had his armor melt out of and then solidify on him. The bullet bounced of the congealed Blacklight like plastic. When he finally got close enough Alex casually grasped the barrels of the guns and snatched them out of Hush's hands. The now desperate Hush then reared back his right arm, clenched his hand into a tight fist, and thrust his arm forward right into Mercer's armored gut. Hush's eyes widened and he stepped back, letting out a groan of pain as he put his right hand into his left one. If he had punched any harder, he would have shattered every bone in him from his finger tips to his wrist.

Mercer made his armor disappear back into his and crushed the guns in his hand as if they were glass. "Got any more tricks up your sleeve, Hush?" he asked with obvious amusement.

"Try this." Hush reached into his trench-coat and pulled out what appeared to be a spray-paint canister. Alex suppressed a laugh and allowed Hush to do whatever he was going to do. Instead of paint, a thick green mist shot out of the cylinder's nozzle, and Mercer instantly felt... sick. He staggered back a step and covered his mouth with his hand as he coughed uncontrollably. After the unnatural smoke dissipated, Mercer took a second to finally step coughing and pulled his hand away to look at it since it was giving him a strange sensation. Biomass dripped off of his digits and palm, and fell to the floor only to evaporate within a second of landing.

"So you _do_ have a weakness," Hush said to himself with a whisper as he observed Zeus's shocked veneer as he watched a strange black ooze drip off of him. "I should try to frame the clown more often." He then raised his voice to catch the attention of both Zeus and his former partner who had been staring stupidly the entire time. "I'm sure you'll enjoy you're final moments! At least your faces will imply that you did!" He pulled a few smoke grenades out of his trench-coat's pockets, pulled off the pins, and threw them towards the duo before running out of the warehouse and into the dying night.

"Oh this is bad!" Riddler cried out as green smog slowly filled the condemned building. "Very bad!" He would have said more, but Zeus grabbed his by the his chest.

"Hold on," Zeus said as he tensed his legs. This stuff was trouble, and running through it was suicide. "And watch your head." He rocketed himself upward with the Riddler locked in his iron grip. He smashed through the rotted and desecrated roof with any sort of trouble. He maneuvered over the rooftops until finally coming to a stop about four blocks away from the warehouse. He tossed Riddler to the ground and looked down at him menacingly. "Who was that?" he asked with a level-headed tone.

"I believe he revealed his name to you," Riddler answered with a smile. It disappeared when Zeus grasped him by the throat and pulled him closer so that their faces were inches apart.

"I am not in the mood for games and jokes."

"Well, that's good," Riddler responded with a nervous smile. "Because niether of those arwe normally associated with me."

His patience lost, Zeus grabbed Riddler by his neck and hoisted him up into the air. "You are wasting my time. I find that to be _royally_ irritating." He was about to squeeze when blinding lighting manifsted out of nowhere and the sound of ahighly powerful engine filled the air. The lights became more focused as a now familiar automobile rolled up next to Zeus and the Riddler.

"Gotten yourself on the bad side of Zeus, Nigma?" Nightwing asked with amusement as he hopped out of the driver-side of the vehicle. Riddler responded with a nervous chuckle.

"Where's the Big Man?" Zeus asked, surpired that Batman wasn't the one in the car.

"He's... sick," Nightwing answered.

"Sick?" Zeus repeated with confusion. "Why would he take the night off just for that?"

"He's _very_ sick," Nightwing insisted.

"Regardless of his condiction," Riddler interjected. "You still have gotten on my way of getting payback at that idiot Hush."

"Idiot?" Nightwing said. "That's a rather small word for you Riddler." He carefully studied the self-proclaimed enigma form a moment that seemed to last for hours until he finally spoke up again. "Zeus, give him a little slap."

Zeus did so without hesitation. Shock filled him when his hand connected with the Riddler's face and seemed to indent it like mud. He pulled hard and managed to release his hand, and took a chuck of the Riddler's skin with it, which clung to him. Zeus observed his hnd and watched as the "skin" slowly turned a slightly light brown, and then slid off of him to the ground. Zeus then looked over to a smiling Riddler and dropped him. The enigma landed on his feet and slowly turned the same color as the substance that was just on Zeus's hand. He grow to about twice his height and his stature widened vastly. He looked like a monster in a matter of seconds.

"Clayface," Nightwing stated as he pulled out two of his signature weapons. "Should've known."

"But like all the others, you didn't, little bird." Clayface's stature and voice reminded Zeus of the Supreme Hunter he had decapitated on the Reagan. That wasn't good.

"I don't know who the Hell you are," Zeus said as he made his claws coat his arms. "And I don't care. You're going down."

"Why do I have a feeling this is going to be a lot harder than you think," Nightwing murmured to Zeus.

**XXXXXX**

**A/N: Originally, this was going to involve a confrontation with Scarecrow, but then I realized something; I have no idea what Alex is afraid of.**


	19. Cold Hearts

**A/N: I'm sorry for this delay. I've been busy helping my friend Phen0m20 with his crossover story, and have been indulged with The Men Who Built America **

**XXXXXX**

The battle wasn't going as easily as Zeus originally anticipated. Whenever he severed a limb off the gross mass of Clayface, the shapeshifter would simply self-replicate so that his arm was no longer missing.

"You know you could try to actually help me!" He yelled at Nightwing who was just avoiding any attacks directly at him. He didn't even attempt to throw a single offensive maneuver.

"Fighting him head on won't do anything!" Nightwing shouted back as the two of them narrowly avoided a swing from Clayface's hand which had taken the form of a giant gladiator ax. The impact left a small fissure in the asphalt street. "We need to be smarter!"

Zeus groaned under his breath. He dodged another assault, and leaped into the air with his blade raised above his head. He came down on top of Clayface and sliced him in half. The brown mush stopped emitting noise and Mercer walked towards Nightwing, grinning smugly. "Well, that is that."

"Not quite." Nightwing said pointing towards the heap. Mercer turned around and saw that Clayface was already beginning to put himself back together.

"This guy is more annoying than Greene," Mercer groaned. "And harder to kill than Cross."

"Who?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Anyway, back to the situation at hand. Obviously, slicing and cutting are not going to do anything." Nightwing began to rapidly try to come up with a strategy before Clayface had completely pulled himself together.

"Alright," Zeus said as he eyed two empty cars on opposite sides of the road with the reforming mass right between them. "How about this!" He held out his right arm towards one of the vehicles and out of his wrist shot a black rope-like tendril. Once the end of the tendril was attached to the car, Mercer swung his arm to the side, detaching the other end of the biomass from him and making it swing onto the other automobile. Just as the line was set, Clayface was returned to his whole and laughed at the apparent attack.

"You missed," Nightwing said without emotion.

"Wasn't aiming for him," Mercer responded with the same detached tone.

As soon as he finished his sentence, the tendril retracted itself, making the two vehicles come flying towards Clayface. They sandwiched him, making it look like he was an overly ripe fruit someone had clenched their fist around. He splattered everywhere. Mercer again looked at Nightwing with a smug veneer. "How about crushing? Will that work?"

"No it won't." Confused, Mercer turned once again to see Clayface putting himself back together. This was becoming _very _irritating. "Hold him off, I'm gonna go get help."

"What, from who?!" Alex demanded, but his shout fell on deaf ears. Nightwing was soon out of eyesight, leaving Alex alone with the only he knew of that could change shape as much as he could. Out of the corners of his vision he could see the Ba Mobile, and a playful thought entered his head. "Let's see what kinda toys you've got, Batman." He ran over to the vehicle and thanked Nightwing for forgetting to leave to door open; Mercer could tell that made his situation a lot easier. Although it only got more complicated as he observed all the button and levers on the control consul. He took in a deep breath and pushed a random flashing light, hoping it would do something in his favor. "Here's goes something."

In the next instant, he heard a hissing sound from somewhere near the car's front, and a small projectile rocketed forward towards the now near fully reformed Clayface, and then the monster once again exploded. Missiles." Mercer stated to himself. "Nice touch, Batman."

He knew, however, that he had merely bought himself another few seconds as the pieces of clay began to crawl back into one conscious heap that let out a battle cry after it formed a hideous mouth. Mercer exited the vehicle and made his claws cover his arms. For a second he looked at them, nearly admiring how much more threatening they appeared since the incident with Ra's and his stupid Pit. He diverted his attention back to the heap of living clay and he hacked and slashed at it again for a good ten minutes, making the freak fall apart time after time, but still Clayface always reformed. Mercer silently said to himself that he would have to come up with a better plan pretty soon. Just as he once again waited for Clayface's pieces to reform, he heard a sort of electrical blast and felt an amazingly cold sensation on his right arm. It didn't hurt, but he felt... numb. He looked to his limb and his eyes widened. His arm was encased entirely in ice.

"Not him, Doc. The one that looks like a monster made out of putty." Nightwing said dryly as he walked up next to Mercer.

"Apologies. The claws were rather... confusing." The other voice was unknown to Mercer, and sounded slightly robotic. He heard clanking and scraping and looked to his other side to see a man with pale blue skin garbed in a futuristic looking suit of armor of a slightly darker blue. Over his eyes were goggles, and in his hand was a gun that also looked like it wouldn't be manufactured for another sixty years. The man looked at Mercer with a face that showed interest. "So you must be the man they call Zeus. I am sincere in my apology for freezing your appendage."

"Whatever." Mercer dead-panned. A simple flex of his arm, and the ice shattered. His arm was now free again.

"Very well, now that the matter is settled, onto the main issue." He looked at the clay, which by now was Clayface. The man in the suit raised the weapon of his and pulled the trigger. Out of the barrel's end came a stream of blue energy. As it collided with Clayface, the morpher slowly was covered with a blue tint of his own, and his movement slowed as well. Eventually, his entire being, like Mercer's arm moments again, was trapped in an arctic prison.

"Thank you, Freeze. You saved us a lot of trouble." Nightwing said as he stepped up next to the the icy statue and looked it over like it was a choice cut of meat.

"The pleasure is all yours," Freeze responded. He looked over at Zeus without a single word. The two of them locked eyes and stared in deathly silence until Freeze spoke again. "You and I shall get to know one another very well very soon."

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that." Zeus said before leaping off over the rooftops. Freezed looked upwards in the direction Zeus had disappeared to for a moment before speaking over to Nightwing. "I take it he doesn't know about the 'agreement' you made with him?"

"Don't worry, Victor," Nightwing assured him. "He's a good man seeking to help people, and he's a very smart scientist. I'm certain he can and will help you."

"He had better," Freeze warned.

**XXXXXX**

From the rooftop of their home, Ivy watched the sun rise. She could not help but worry about Alex even though he was indestructible. He had been gone all night, and the sirens from police cars never stopped wailing through the hours. Fortunately, her woes were put to rest when he came out of nowhere and landed on the roof. He stood there looking at her for a long moment.

He thought back to hat he had experienced in such a short night. Dealing with Dollmaker, Clayface, Hush, and now some other freak in a suit of armor.

"Ivy..." He said as she looked into his tired eyes. "You would _not believe _how my night went.


	20. Solutions

Mercer was awaiting his calculations to be completed and virtually tested. He had decided a few days ago to finally use the resourses he had 'inheirited' from Oswald Cobblepot. He purchased an advanced computer system that was nearly impossible to hack, a helicopter for more subtle travel around the city, and an even more elaborate security system for the building he and Ivy lived in.

She walked into what used to be Oswald Cobblepot's office. She wasn't exactly sure what Alex had converted it into, but he had been spending the majority of his time either in the room or out in the city doing God knows what. The scene inside was surprising to say the least. He was tiring at the desk with his back to her, rapidly typing on a keyboard. Mounted on the wall he was facing were several monitors. Some displayed computer data, a few showed news broadcasts, another three or four were security screens showing different parts of the building outside, and others had scientific calculations on them. On the right side of the room there was a long work-table that was covered with equipment that looked like it belonged in a science-fiction movie. Suddenly, on of the screens began beeping loudly and flashing red. On it was the word "FAILURE."

"Damn it!" Alex growled. He slammed his fist onto the desk. He regained his bearings and let of a sigh before returning to putting in commands on the keyboard. He then murmured to himself, "Every problem has a solution."

Ivy slowly walked up to behind him. She lowered herself and wrapped her arms around him. She maneuvered her head around his hood and gave him a small kiss on his right cheek. She was relieved that he didn't pull away for once. "What are you doing?" she asked in a somewhat loud whisper.

"Adapting and overcoming," he said in his usual voice. He went back to working, and Ivy didn't move. She looked down and noticed that aside from an old newspaper, the keyboard he was using, and a strange spray can, the bureau was bare. She looked closer at the newspaper and read the headline.

"Gotham's Two Titans Attend Joker Memorial"

Under the bold print was a picture Alex and Bruce Wayne standing in front of the front entrance of the police station which was full of pictures of the Clown, dead flower bouquets, and small fires.

"How can anyone commemorate that... that..." Ivy struggled to find a word disgusting enough.

"Primeval and degenerative reprobate?" Alex suggested.

"Exactly." She brought her head down and rested it on her shoulder. She then took a more observant glance at the spray can, and saw that it was a familiar purple and decorated with painted smiles and Batman symbols with X's through them. "How did you get that? Did the Clown just give it to you?"

"Nope. But that guy was kind enough to give me his." He pointed his arm to the left side of the room. Ivy looked over and saw a man who was obviously one of the Joker's henchman; he was wearing sloppy face makeup and a tattered shirt with a smily face painted on it. He was also pinned to the wall in midair courtesy of a javelin through his neck. "Snatched him off the street. He didn't know where his boss was hiding, but he did have a can of that annoying toxic gas he always uses."

"I see. But why did you bring him back here?"

"Needed a test subject," he said with a slight shrug.

"For what, exactly?"

"For this." He picked up the spray can. "You might want to take a few steps back."

She did as he suggested and he sprayed the contents right into his face. A green mist engulf his head, but it dissipated moments later. For a few seconds nothing happened. But suddenly Alex began to chuckle. It was soft at first, but then it grew to as if he had heard a very clever pun. It didn't sound uncontrollable, but he still couldn't stop.

"Why is this so..." He burst into a small fit of laughter before he could finish his sentence. He bang his head down onto the desk and pounded his fist on it a few times before finally standing up and walking over to the work-table. He picked up a syringe with a shiny blue liquid in it and injected it into his left thigh. A few seconds later his laughing fit when away and ceased. He took in a few long breaths and kept himself balanced by planting his hands on the table. "Well, that was little progress."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Ivy asked. She wasn't sure what his motives for willingly poisoning himself were.

"I have a very strong feeling that I can build an immunity to this... stuff," he answered looking at the syringe he had injected himself with. "After all, back in Manhattan I overcame an airborne vaccine designed to do nothing but kill me. This little mixture should be nothing. At least if it weren't for one problem."

"Problem?" Ivy couldn't see how something like this could produce problems for the one other non-botanical organism she had positive feelings for.

Alex turned himself to look at the myriad of monitors on the wall. "According to the chemical makeup of the gas, Joker can make this out of a large variety of chemicals, just so long as they had the suitable components. They don't even have to have a specific ration of each element. This makes it very difficult to isolate and reverse engineer the gas." He let out a sigh, but after that his voice brightened up ever so slightly. "But like they say, every problem has its solution."

Movement on one of the security monitors caught his eyes. It wasn't any of the Rogue's nor their goons. He had heard the talk among some of them whilst out on the town a few times. They all spoke fearfully about the Iceberg Lounge and surrounding area being Zeus's turf; an area where you only went to if you were irrationally brave, immeasurably stupid, or just plain suicidal.

He took a few steps closer and got a clear view of who it was.

XXXXXX

Nightwing cautiously walked up to the desecrated double doors. He wasn't sure if Ivy would reinstate the deal from when Gotham was cut off from the world the first time. He was about to open it when someone from the inside did so for him.

"Zeus," he said with a greeting nod.

"'Wing," Mercer said back.

"Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but can we skip the chit-chat? I need to talk to Ivy."

"How did you know we were here?"

"Most likely the giant vines prodding out of what used to be your windows."

Mercer felt slightly stupid at that moment, but he shook it off. Ivy then walked up next to him.

"What is it?" she asked without curiosity or irritation.

"We were hoping that we could repeat our little system from last time," Nightwing answered. He then looked at Mercer, who looked a little confused, and explained. "Fresh produce for those who can't reach the food drops before they're all gone, and we leave the two of you be, as long as you don't do anything... irrational."

The two meta-humans looked at each other.

"Why not?" Mercer said with a brief shrug. "We're not doing anything. Might as well be productive and helpful."

Ivy pondered on it for a long moment. Finally, she have her answer. "Deal."

Nightwing let out a relieved sigh. He was certain that they would have at least threatened him. He didn't imagine it would be this easy. But his bliss was short lived. He looked right into Zeus's eyes with grave seriousness. "I... we need your help."

"Who doesn't?" Mercer said with a grin as they two of them walked away and climbed into the parked Batmobile which had been waiting in the street behind Nightwing.

As she watched them drive off to wherever they were going, Ivy couldn't help but smile. Alex had been a little sarcastic. He was starting to lighten up and not be so dour and gloomy all the time. He was starting to forgive himself. He was finally beginning to feel genuine happiness again.

XXXXXX

As they made their way to the destination, which was still unknown to him, Mercer looked out the tinted windows and noticed something. When they first started driving, people were actually outside. Children were playing together and friends were talking and walking. But as they progressed, that little bit of joy in the city withered away. Less and less people were outside, and those who were looked scared for their lives, walking quickly and incessantly looking to their sides and over their shoulders.

"What the Hell is going on?" Mercer had meant to say that to himself, but it caught Nightwing's ear.

"People that live around your home feel safe from harm. But around here, gangs and villains rule the streets. They take what they want and leave all the others to die or pay for survival."

The horrid fact sunk deep into Mercer, but it was the first part that got the deepest.

"I make people feel... safe?" He was amazed. He was used to people running in fear and screaming at the very mention of his name.

"It's a different time Zeus," Nightwing assured and he placed his right hand on the stunned anti-hero. "A new beginning."

A few minutes later they drove through a waterfall which lead to a cave full of several huge objects and computers, including a colossal penny and an animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. They walked through the vast chamber and made their way to an elevator. They went up and found themselves in Wayne Manor. Nightwing guided him upstairs to a bedroom. In the bed was a horrible looking Bruce Wayne. He was coughing roughly and looked almost undead. An IV was flowing into his arm and an oxygen tank was there next to the bed, just in case.

"Master Bruce must have complete faith in you, Doctor Mercer," Alfred said as he walked past them and brought a silver tray with medicine and tea over to the nightstand next to Bruce. "Not a lot of people are shown the Cave on his approval."

"Mercer," Bruce said weakly. "I've never seen anything like what I'm going through." He coughed uncontrollably before continuing. "So I need to know... Is it that virus you helped develop?"

"Perhaps," Mercer said. "Hold on." He stepped over to the bed so that he was standing over Bruce, who looked a hundred times worse up close. Mercer closed his eyes tightly, and when he opened them they had a glowing yellow aura around them. After not even half a second, he closed his eyes again, and they were normal when he opened them. Without the glow, Bruce could see the grave fear in them. He had his answer.

"How long do I have?" He asked getting right to the point. He could tell his time was precious, but he had to know just how much he had left.

"It's a miracle you're still among us," Mercer said. "Usually, Blacklight kills within minutes. You are either immortal, or your immune system and will are stronger than the finest steel."

"Is there any way to treat it?" Bruce asked. He would never give up, submit, or lose hope.

"No," Alex said solemnly. But then his eyes and mood lifted slightly. "Maybe. If I can reverse all of my work, maybe, just maybe, I can make a vaccine. But I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst," Bruce said with a very strained voice. "Plus, I think I know someone who can help."

"What? Who?" Mercer was surprised by this claim.

"Remember the blue guy in the robotic suit?" Nightwing asked with a smile.

"Until then..." Bruce spoke up with sheer seriousness. "The world needs a Batman." He looked at Nightwing, who in return lost all the color in his still masked face. Bruce saw this reaction. "Who else could do it, Nightwing?"

He let out a defeated sigh. Mercer stayed silent despite the thoughts flooding into his mind. He was riding a guilt train that was flying off the rails. He felt that he had an obligation and a debt to become the new Caped Crusader. Here was a man who had given up on having comfort in his own life to give a ray of hope to others in a filthy pit of crime and debauchery, and Mercer had basically sent him and countless others to their early graves. It was happening again. He had directly ruined am immeasurable amount of lives with his work. And all them, his victims, were paying the price for his mistakes and actions.

But the weight of all this mental warfare made him hold his tongue. He then felt that he was overstaying his welcome. So he left the mansion without another word.

XXXXXX

Two-Face sat in the passenger seat of the armored truck he and three of his men had hijacked. Driving was one of his goons while the other were in the back with the two million dollars worth of coins.

"Easiest heist ever," Two-Face said to the driver. "Haven't seen the Bat in a few days, so I figured now would've been perfect to get some additional fundings."

"Sure thing boss." The driving goon said, paying more attention to the icy, snow-coated road that his employer.

Suddenly Two-Face heard a whirring above the truck. He could tell that is wasn't a police or news chopper since there wasn't a spotlight illuminating on them. So what was it? Just then it felt as if another vehicle had landed on top of them. Face had to regain his composure and balance. Then something even more strange happened. The truck began to go up into the air.

"What's goin' on?" the driver cried out as they went higher and higher.

"It's the Bat," Two-Face growled. When the truck was about fourty feet in the air, whatever was holding onto them must have released because they plummeted into the ground. The truck landed on its side with Two-Face's window facing the sky. He pushed the door upwards and climbed out into the cold street. His driver followed, and the other two goons forced open the double doors on the back of the truck. They climbed out and a few hundred silver dollars fell to the snow. The foursome looked up towards the helicopter. The pilot climbed out and fell to the ground. He landed on his feet, and his chopper's autopilot had it fly away back to wherever it was programmed to go. Two-Face couldn't believe his eyes. Batman looked a lot different. Almost completely different. He still had the thick suit, but it was almost completely black except for his symbol on his chest, which was a glistening silver. The armor on his arms sported spikes, as did the armor covering his legs. His mouth was now hidden behind a mouth plate that was the same shiny tone as the bat on his chest. The spots over his eyes were scalene triangles which made it look like his was angry at the world; the dark orange tint made them even more nightmarish. The cape looked tattered for some reason.

"New getup, Bats?" Two-Face said as he put his coin safely in in his jacket pocket and pulled out his twin .45s. He didn't get a response. Instead Batman brought his right arm up so that his clenched fist was next to his left ear. And then he swung it forward and around, making a myriad of spikes fly off his arm. They soared through the air fast as bullets. Two-Face's henchman were then pinned up via the projectiles. Two of them were stuck to the side of the van since the spikes had gotten hold of their thick jackets and then embedded themselves in the armor of the vehicle. The third was struck in the arm three times. He screamed out in agony as he put his good hand over his bleeding limb. Miraculously Two-Face did not come into contact at all with the potentially lethal projectiles. He looked back to Batman after assessing the damage done to his crew. He aimed and fired. The Bat didn't fall down. He didn't even stagger back a step. Sparks flew off his outfit when the bullets struck, but that was it. The former DA looked on in awe as Batman looked down at the bullets on his outfit. They were over his stomach, but they didn't get past the surface and were flattened. He grabbed and plucked them out of his black costume. He looked at them, and then flicked them into the snow.

Two-Face couldn't believe what he was seeing. He shook his head roughly to regained his wits and again aimed both his guns at the Bat.

XXXXXX

Bruce Wayne was struggling to finish the herbal tea Alfred have given him. It was hot, but soothing. That was the sensation he really needed to feel. His body felt like it was rejecting everything at once. As he finally emptied the fine cup, his biological son burst into the room.

"Dad! You gotta see this!" Damian shouted excitedly. Before Bruce could respond, he grabbed the TV remote and switched it on to a live news broadcast. At first Bruce thought it was another Joker threat, but he looked on for one second and was shocked beyond speech at what he saw: a demonic version of him walking towards Two-Face as the former DA desperately shot at him.

"Again, we are above what appears to be a stand-off between Harvey Dent, now known as the master criminal Two-Face, and what seems to be Batman in a new suit. As you can see, the bullets don't seem to faze him at all."

"Who on Earth..." Bruce began to say. He trailed off as the second Batman grabbed Harvey by the neck and hoisted him into the air. Then his free arm seemed to gradually be covered in thick black slime, which continued to be put on later after layer. It the congealed and the next thing anybody knew, the Batman in TV had claws exactly like...

"Zeus." Bruce said, not exactly sure to who. "What have you done?"


	21. Savior Or Tyrant?

**"You're not Batman!"**

Those three words were screamed at the peak of Two-Face's lungs. He kept his hands on the imposter's wrist, trying to keep himself elevated slightly. His eyes fearfully stared at the razor-sharp talons on the freak's open arm. He knew that the thin, silver swords could slice through his like water.

At that moment, Mercer froze. He found himself in a tight spot to say the least. The claws forming on his arm hadn't been conscious. It was an innate action he had picked up back in Manhattan when ever an Infected had been in his clutches. And now here he was, Two-Face at his mercy. Thoughts ran through his head. He might have made a horrible mistake taking on the role of Gotham's Caped Crusader. Killing was part of his MO, but not Batman's. How could he just let the freaks and murderers basically walk away to ruin more lives another day? He was trying to forgive himself, not prove himself to anybody. He realized that being the Bat was far more complex than he had initially thought. He didn't do things the quick or easy way, he did everything the 'right way' as he called it. Mercer wasn't used to that. He would just slice, crush, or consume and call it a done deal.

Before anymore thoughts could flood into his head, he heard the shuttering of camera lens and several flashes of white light. He looked around and saw several reporters for whatever news channel they worked for. They got in a circle around him and the still suspended Two-Face. They call began asking him questions at the same time.

"Are you Batman or Zeus?"

"How did you get the claws?"

"Are you going to kill Two-Face?"

He couldn't take it anymore. He needed to think. He looked back up to Two-Face. The former DA had fear and terror written all over both his faces. Mercer didn't say a single word. Killing Two-Face wouldn't have been right. The cesspool of a city needed hope, real hope. Not a rampaging, mass-murdering vigilante. He had to have them think Batman had simply adapted a new apparel. He through Two-Face to the ground and began walking away. In the direction he was going, the circle of bystanders parted like he was Moses and they were the sea. None of them followed him. About twenty seconds after he started walking away, he heard the screeching of sirens make their way towards the armored truck and Two-Face.

When he was certain that nobody could see him, he tensed his legs and rocketed himself into the air. He landed on a snow-covered rooftop. He willed the armored suit he was wearing to melt back into him and be replaced by his usual hoodie and jeans.

He looked to the almost starless sky and took in a very deep breath. He slowly exhaled and relaxed his body slightly. This task he has chosen to take, becoming the new Batman, was not going to be a cakewalk. The didn't bother him much; he had overcome a true hell back in Manhattan. But on the other hand, the innocent people here had actual hope to survive. That hadn't been the case back where he had come from. Plus, he didn't exactly think he even deserved to be called a hero. Not after what he had done...

"That was quiet a show." The statement pulled Mercer back into reality. He looked behind him and saw that Nightwing was now on the roof as well. The mask his his facial expression. "I'm gonna get right to the point: why?"

"This city needs hope," Mercer said. "And they can't possibly get it from me. And since I'm the reason your friend is close to his last breath, this is my fault and my burden."

Before either of them could say another word, Mercer walked over to and stepped off the ledge. He fell four stories to an empty street in a slum part of town. He heard something land on the street right after him and saw Nightwing had somehow followed him without obtaining a scratch.

"Is there something you want?" Mercer asked. "Or are you just trying to irritate me?"

"Yes," Nightwing answered. "I want you to attack me."

"I'm sorry?" Mercer tried, and partially failed, to stifle a laugh.

"You heard me. Attack me."

Mercer couldn't help but smile slightly. He formed his whipfist on his right and and claws on the other. "If you insist. Any particular reason?"

"Training exercise," he answered with a shrug.

They stood there, looking at each other in silence. Mercer broke the moment by lashing out his whipfist upwards and bringing it down onto Nightwing, resulting in the street having a small trench. When the dust settled, Mercer was surprised that Nightwing wasn't crushed. He was standing next to the spiked than that was Mercer's arm with a smirk on his face. "Is that all you got?"

In response Mercer retracted his arm and lashed it out, this time in a horizontal arch. Right when it was about to slice him in half, Nightwing grabbed onto it and used momentum to hurl himself over it in a manuveur that resembled a cartwheel. He landed on his feet and the whip didn't harm him at all.

"I thought you were better at this," Nightwing said with a smug grin.

Mercer was now very much annoyed. He once again retracted his extended arm. When it was normal in length again, he made it slowly grow in size until his nearly unbreakable shield replaced it. He charged at Nightwing like an out-of-control locomotive. Just as he was about to be rammed, Nightwing also ran forward and jumped slightly. Just as they were about to make contact, he grabbed the top of Mercer's shield and again avoided the attack by hurling himself over Alex. Nightwing once again landed like a graceful cat. Mercer wound up having to skid to a screeching halt. He looked back at the condescending Nightwing with a furious scowl. He made the shield reform itself so that he now had both of his claws at the ready. He saw that an empty car was right next to him. He picked it up over his head as if it weighed no more than a feather. He threw it towards Nightwing who was already running towards him. As the vehicle flew at him, the acrobat dropped down so that he was lying on his back but sliding across the ground at the same time.

The car flew past him overhead. When the air was clear he somehow got back up into a running position and continued coming right at Mercer. The walking virus was ready for this. He lashed out his claws, but like all his other attacks, Nightwing maneuvered around it. He grabbed onto Mercer's arm, somehow managing to avoid piercing his fingers on the spikes. However this time he delivered an attack of his own. After flying over Mercer, he landers passing kick on the back of Alex's shoulder blades. Mercer stumbled forward a few steps, but ultimately managed to maintain his balance. He stood there, breathing heavily. He turned around and saw Nightwing casually standing there with that same damned smirk on his face. It was then that Mercer saw that for the first time since Bloodtox was first introduced to Manhattan, he was on the losing end of a fight. Nightwing was far too... agile and flexible. He was an acrobat, and Mercer essentially fought like a brute.

Mercer made his claws disappear and he put his hands up in defeat. "Fine. For the first time ever, I admit that I lose."

Nightwing, instead of gloating, walked right up to him and shook his hand in true sportsmanship. "This proves my point; you're too destructive to be Gotham's Batman. And it isn't your fault. But you don't know him, I bet half the Batmobiles that he's going to pull through."

"And you don't know Blacklight. I bet that only a Goddamn miracle can save him."

"The weird thing about this city..." Nightwing started. "Is that miracles are actually somewhat common."

"It also seems to be a place where nightmares have a habit of becoming reality." Mercer pointed out.

"Okay, you got me there." Nightwing chuckled. "They even each other out."

Mercer just looked at him skeptically. How could he maintain such an optimistic attitude in such a somber situation?

"You need a ride a ride back? I'm headed over to your place anyway." Nightwing said.

Mercer thought about it for a second, and then shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?"

XXXXXX

Poison Ivy stood by the front doors of the former Iceberg Lounge. Today was the day one of the Bat Family was due to collect their bargain; three huge crates of fresh produce for the starving people.

She heard the roaring of an engine and saw one of the Batman's vehicles pull up. From within it came Nightwing and, to her surprise, Alex.

"Is that it?" Nightwing asked, pointing to the crates.

"Indeed," Ivy said as Mercer walked up to her. She kissed him, and much to her satisfaction he returned it. They separated and turned so that both of them were looking at the acrobatic fighter.

"Great." He pulled out a small black remote and pressed a few buttons. Within moments, an engine could be heard overhead. All three of them looked up to see one of Batman's aerial vehicles levitating above them. From it came a giant metal claw which slowly lowered to the ground, grasped the crates, and lifted them back up into the air. When everything was secure, the aircraft turned around and flew off to the heart of the city.

"Well, thanks," Nightwing said looking back at the very peculiar couple. "See you around." He climbed back into the militaristic car and sped off.

As the two of them watched him slowly recede into the snowy night, Mercer slowly shook his head. "I am beginning to not like that guy."

"Why's that?" Ivy asked. She thought that Alex had a rather positive relationship with the Bat Family.

"In a weird, unorthodox way, he kicked my ass."

XXXXXX

Alex was in his lab/office, still trying to figure out a vaccine to the Joker's laughing gas. Suddenly, the TV he left on to provide him with white noise emitted something that caught his ear. He stopped doing his research and looked at what turned out to be a news channel. The reporter was half way done with the 'emergency announcement' but he still caught on enough that the government was giving up some of its support and hope for the quarantined major city. And that to save money, they would be forcing the city to experience rolling blackouts. As soon as that last part was said, the entire room went black.

"Well ain't this perfect," he said to himself. Having memorized the layout of the room, and the entire building itself, he easily made his way out to the main room, which was partially lit thanks to the rising sun outside. He heard the now familiar sound of plants growing at an impossibly fast rate and saw a vine drop Ivy off on the walkway.

"Alex, what's going?" She asked. There was concern in her voice. Mercer wasn't surprised. Without power, the building could operate its industrial heater and keep the place warm for the jungle that covered the entire ground-level floor.

"Oh, we're just going to be having a few random blackouts."

"What?! For how long?"

"Indefinitely." He looked down at the shrubbery and heard Iby frantically ask him what they were going to do. His thoughts drifted to the fact that he had billions in bank accounts thanks to the Penguin. Then he got an idea. An idea not to help just them, but a lot of people.

XXXXXX

Bruce Wayne sat in his bed, feeling like everything in his body was rejecting itself and him. He was watching several different news channels to see how the city was holding up without him. Suddenly, one had something every single other broadcast didn't: positive news.

"I am standing here next to one of the several sustaining power generators that has been donated to the city and its people. When the powers that be cut off our power, our warmth and light, someone stepped in to give a helping hand and provide comfort to thousands of people who were ready to give up. I am Jack Ryder, and I would like to personally thank the Mercer Foundation. For not only giving us light to help us see our city again, but for also helping us see the sliver lining."

Bruce shut off the screen and sat alone with his thoughts. This was an excellent break through for the city, but it had potential to be a horrible turn of events. It was obvious to the world's Greatest Detective that the Mercer Foundation was created and owned by his acquaintance, Alexander J. Mercer, and that he has given light and power back to Gotham, but now he could also threaten to take it away at his leisure. Bruce wasn't sure if Mercer would actually do this, but it was undoubtedly possible.


End file.
